Tape backups

[Darin Perusich]

is the tape drive being recognized by the system, if you cat 
/proc/scsi/scsi is the drive listed? load a tape in the device and do an 
  "mt stat", what do you get back? is this drive a dlt or mammoth tape 
device?

John Seth wrote:
> Recently I've gone from a standalone PC with no SCSI, 256MB of RAM, and an
> AMD 350 CPU to a Quad Processor Xeon 733 w/ 2GB of RAM, and plenty of raid
> disk space (Dell rackmount systems).  However, this system doesn't have a
> tape backup, and isn't attached to my company's main tape auto-mounter.  I
> plugged in an Exabyte 8900T that was lying around collecting dust into an
> available scsi port and can do the rewind/eject thing with MT, however up
> to this point, I've never needed to do my own backups to tape (I backup my
> own server via FTP nightly after using tar/gunzip).
> 
> When I try to create a new backup via tar to the tape, it crashes, or
> dumps.  When I look at the console, I get some info that makes little
> sense to me.  Since I'm basically a newbie at backing up to tape, I'm
> wondering if anyone has some ideas on where I can start.  Do I need to
> format the tape?  and if so, how do I do it?  This system is running RH
> 8.0 with no Xwin...
> 
> Secondly, on my own personal system, I installed an old floppy tape drive,
> and wonder if anyone has any ideas for me on where to start with that...
> Forgive me for sounding desperate, the TLDP website is good, but there's
> just so much out there, that I'm beginning to be overwhelmed by opinions
> and ideas.  My system is running Slackware 8, so there's no such thing as
> 'amanda'...
> 
> Any tips, pointers, and suggestions are welcome :)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>    Tony
> 
> ---
> Dell system errors from Exabyte 8900T drive:
> 
> Apr  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
> Apr  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: Additional sense indicates Cannot write medium - incompatible format
> Apr  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
> Apr  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: Additional sense indicates Cannot write medium - incompatible format
> Apr  9 15:26:57 ebonite kernel: st0: Error on write filemark.
> 
> 


-- 
Darin Perusich
Unix Systems Administrator
Cognigen Corp.
darinper at cognigencorp.com