> I am writing some [minimal] oss software, after 5 years of just using it. > > Background: > > Simplified "unmanaged" distributions like e-smith / SME server > (www.contribs.org) are not supposed to require a full-time admin. > > Once setup by someone competent, they require nil maintenance unless > something breaks. > > I am unsatisfied with the backup solutions available. Hard drives are > now large, but large tape drives are expensive, especially for the s in > SME. > > I like the DDS2 tape drives that are almost free and plentiful around > here, as are tapes used once only. > > > Problem: > > The system does not provide effectively for incremental backups, and in > any case that would require sensible tape management. I want a full > nightly backup on a new tape each night. However, the data set is too > large for the tape, and restoring can be complex. > > Solution: > > 1) Get flexbackup to prompt for the next tape via email. I couldn't > figure this out, and in a full backup every 24 hours you may find a tape > drive which is permanently in use. > > 2) Split the backup into five flexbackup sets, named by the days of the > week. Call flexbackup with date +%A as the set name. Define the sets, > each small enough to fit on a certain part of the drive. Automate this > using bash scripts and du, and a script to detect when the sets are too > large to fit on the tape > > Question: > > How can I determine the capacity of a tape in a generic fashion? I > want this to run on any e-smith machine.
I think it's almost impossible to determine the capacity of a tape without disabling hardware compression, which is on by default. Just yesterday I've built an rpm package of a tool I discovered which may be exactly what you want. It's called SpanTape and is available here http://sokrates.mimuw.edu.pl/~sebek/spantape/ and the rpm is here http://www.invoca.ch/pub/packages/spantape/ It works like dd but outputs to SCSI tapes and lets you span the output to multiple tapes. I didn't use it yet but it sounds very useful. Regards, Simon ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_ide95&alloc_id396&op=click _______________________________________________ flexbackup-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flexbackup-help
