tape drive error

[bscott at ntisys.com]

  Some general tips and tricks about "tar", "mt", and the like...

On 13 Feb 2004, at 3:44pm, cfarinella at appropriatesolutions.com wrote:
> mt -f /dev/st0 rewind

  mt, by default, will use "/dev/tape".  Thus, the following can be very
convenient:

	ln -s nst0 /dev/tape

> for path in $backupdirs
> do
>     echo "System backup on $path" 
>     tar cf /dev/nst0 $path 1>/dev/null

  You can just do

	tar cf /dev/nst0 $backupdirs

to get the same result.  I recommend not sending the output to /dev/null,
but reviewing it for errors.

>     tar tf /dev/nst0 1>/dev/null && \

  Uhhh... this doesn't really verify anything.  Well, it verifies that there
is something that looks like a tar archive on the tape.  To actually
*verify*, use the "d" (diff) option, which compares the data on the tape to
your filesystem.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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