On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 00:10, Jobst Schmalenbach wrote: > all, > > When you want to extract tapes from a tape WITHOUT using amanda > how do you know which file a particular archive is located? > > Wouldnt it be a good idea to have a "table of content" located > in the second BLOCk?
Jobst, My approach to this is to run amtoc after each backup run and copy the resulting TOC file to at least one other machine, if not more. This ensures that even if I completely lose my indexes and logs, I will still know what is on each tape and where. Knowing the tape file number of the DLE I want to recover enables me to precisely position the tape with mt, then dd the file off the tape and begin the restore. Check out the manpage on amtoc-- it's pretty simple to use. I made a small shell script that runs from the AMANDA user's cron. This script runs amdump, then amtoc, then scp's the amtoc file to a remote server. For extra redundancy, you can also print the latest run's TOC to hardcopy (like Paul says he does using amreport and a Postscript template). I try not to mess with the tape after AMANDA gets hold of it. She knows best. ;) Cheers, Eric
