I too have an Exabyte 8200. Mine works, so I mention what I do.
The primary line I use is
/sbin/dump 0uBf 2500000 /dev/nst0 /
Notice the 0 for a whole dump, the B for size 2.5MB (2500000)
You merely needed to tell it how long your tape is,
otherwise the default is old-fashioned small.
If you have a Buslogic SCSI controller, it could be incompatible with
your Exabyte tape -- search the debian-user archives for the last couple
months,
or send me email (Exabyte has a firmware change you can make).
Both Buslogic and Exabyte are giving the Linux community some help,
Exabyte through their web page.
Here is part of a script I worked up, running it weekly as a cron job.
log_file=/usr/local/backup/rabbit-log/rabbit_`/bin/date +%b-%d-%Y_%I:%M%p`
touch $log_file #This allows entries below to append $logfile,
#so the first entry need not be unique.
/bin/mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind
# The total becomes greater than 2.5GB,
# so I now backup "/mirror" on a separate tape.
for filesystem in \
/ /usr /var \
/home /usr/local
do
if [ -z "$chunk" ]; then chunk=0;
else chunk=`expr $chunk + 1`; fi
echo ' ' >>$log_file 2>&1
echo ' ' >>$log_file 2>&1
echo "---------- BACKING-UP ONTO TAPE-CHUNK \
$chunk `hostname`:${filesystem} ----------" >>$log_file 2>&1
# /sbin/dump 0uf /dev/nst0 $filesystem >>$log_file 2>&1
/sbin/dump 0uBf 2500000 /dev/nst0 $filesystem >>$log_file 2>&1
done
/bin/mt -f /dev/nst0 offline #So, you should insert a weekly backup-tape
on Saturday.
