Hi, On 11/15/2006 8:58 PM, Dan Langille wrote: > On 15 Nov 2006 at 14:49, David W Borhani wrote: > > >>Hi, I am considering using bacula for my laboratory data backups. A few >>questions on whether it will work with my hardware, and regarding a few >>features: >> >>1.Will my hardware work w/ bacula? >> Tape Drive Cybernetics CY-8102 AIT2 8 mm tape drive, 50/150 >>GB, *** iSCSI *** >> System Linux Redhat EL4, 2.6.xxxx kernel > > > I have no idea. :)
It should work as long as you use the standard devices to access the tape drive, i.e. /dev/nst0 for the tape drive. Using the capabilities like fast seeking should work, too, but if it does I don't understand why the manufacturers own software can't do it. > >>2. How fast can bacula find a file on a tape to restore (i.e., does it >>fast-forward to the right spot on the tape, or does it "read" through at >>the regular [slow] read/write speed)? Can it restore a file from the end >>of the tape in a few minutes, instead of hours? > > > Bacula can fast-forward, if your OS/Tape drive allow it. Adjust your > bacula-dir.conf file during the tape testing stage to get this > behaviour. Better advust the bacula-sd.conf file :-) By the way, it's not really very time consuming to download the bacula source (or rpm for your platform), install bacula, set up the SD and run the tests you'll run anyway once you decide to give it a try. Testing the tape drive does not require a full Bacula setup with catalog database, jobs, and schedules. > >>3. How are files written onto tape? Like (multiple) tar files, w/ >>filemarks. Or some other sort of format? In other words, can a >>bacula-written tape be recovered w/ tar (or some other standard, simple >>Linux utility) if needed? > > > Yes to the last question. See bls and bextract. Of course, bls and bextract are not exactly standard unix utilities. But then, tar isn't, too, unless you use the right version with the correct options... I would even go so far to say that Bacula tape format is better portable than a tar archive. For tar, you'd need to know lots of details - which tar (gnu, posix, certain unix flavor), which options, which version. This happens, of course, once you need to read a tar archive after the last machine with <insert unix flavor here> died and you really need the data... Arno -- IT-Service Lehmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] Arno Lehmann http://www.its-lehmann.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
