I'm sending this in case it helps anyone or anyone has any suggestions.
I am running RedHat Linux 5.2 with kernel 2.0.36. I am using an iomega ditto easy
3200 off the parallel port.
I began with ftape 4.02 and attempted to use bru 2000, personal edition, for backup.
I kept getting errors on both backup and verification. They apparently occured
randomly on the tape and were usually seen as end of volume.
I upgraded to ftape 4.03-pre1 and things improved. I got no errors during the backup
but still got errors at random places on the tape during verify that were usually seen
as end of volume on the tape. I can't remember everything I did but I fooled around
with bru and ftape parameters until I was consistently getting errors (end of volume)
within about 20 blocks of the end of what the backup said it had written to tape.
No problem! I backed up a dummy file at the end of a backup set which was more than
20 blocks long so that data on the tape until that point was restorable.
I just updated to ftape-4.x-1999_02_07. Now I still get no errors on backup, which
takes about an hour and a half. (Still no problem.) However, when I attempt to do
"bru -i" to check internal consistency of the backup it ran for 12 hours and was about
1/2 way through before I stopped it. There were no errors until the point at which it
stopped.
>From the sound of the tape it was doing a lot of shoeshining. If I attempt a verify
>or restore it sounds the same. Looks like it will take about a day to restore the
>last file on the tape.
Any ideas?
