thank you again for answering so quick.
here my original question:
> i'm just wrinting a skript that should check if the right tape is in the
> drive bevore it beginns to backup. is there a possibility to write some
> kind of label to a tape and read that label later, so that i can compare
> the wanted tape to that in the drive and give an alert if the tape has to
> be changed.
most of you considered to write a file to the beginning of a tape. one might do this by
using tar and writing an emty file with the tape label as name or by using or by dealing
with dd.
here an exampe for tar:
tar cvf /dev/nrmt1h $file
mt -f /dev/nrmt1h rewind
tar tf /dev/nrmt1h
.. and one for dd:
write some string, date or whatever in a file
mt -f /dev/nrmt0h rew to rewind the tape
dd if=file of=/dev/nrmt0h ... to write file as label
reading:
mt -f /dev/nrmt0h rew to rewind the tape
dd if=/dev/nrmt0h of=tmpfile ... to read the label
others considered ansi labels but as far as i got this is rather unusual and not very
practicable.
Oisin McGuinness considered using amanda which will do that work for me, but as far as i
now amanda it is not suited for doing that what my script intends:
i have on tape drive and need to make cold backups of our db as well as to archive
logfiles. cold backups go to on of the cold backup tapes and archive files to one of the
archive tapes both tape sets cycle. its a rather difficult situation since there need to
be some time when the tapes can be changed, admins have to get informed before which
tape is needed and no existing backups should be overwritten.
of course any further considerations are welcome. once my script is up and running i
might post it here, or simply ask for it.
here the names of the people that helped me:
Paul.Casteels <casteels_at_uia.ua.ac.be>
Alan Rollow <alan_at_nabeth.cxo.dec.com>
A. Mahendra Rajah <A.Mahendra.Rajah_at_meena.cc.uregina.ca>
Oisin McGuinness <oisin_at_sbcm.com>
Lucio Chiappetti <lucio_at_ifctr.mi.cnr.it>
Bernt Christandl <beb_at_xray.mpe.mpg.de>
Jim Belonis <belonis_at_dirac.phys.WASHINGTON.EDU>
clemens schmuck
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clemens schmuck - systemadministator
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hellbrunnerstr. 34 clemens_at_wst.edvz.sbg.ac.at
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http://www.edvz.sbg.ac.at/~clemens
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Received on Thu Jan 28 1999 - 07:28:12 NZDT