Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 13:38:54 +0200 From: Axel Scheepers <axel@axel.truedestiny.net> To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Tor_Nyr=E9n?= <tor.nyren@telia.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Tape devices Message-ID: <20020606133854.B67863@mars.thuis> In-Reply-To: <000701c20d39$e927ecc0$0d00a8c0@telia.com>; from tor.nyren@telia.com on Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 11:09:48AM %2B0200 References: <000701c20d39$e927ecc0$0d00a8c0@telia.com>
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On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 11:09:48AM +0200, Tor Nyrén wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think you have a wonderful product. I am using it with different configurations and everything works fine.
>
> Since I think most people use it as a server product, support for server hardware is important. One thing that is very important in this regard is backup.
> I am trying to use an Onstream IDE backup unit with 4.5, but I can not get it to work. I tried Caldera Linux (3.1.1), and after doing some research everything worked fine. I don't want to use Linux !
> What can I do to make it work ?
> I am trying to use a 15/30 GB FAST Onstream device.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Tor Nyren
>
Hi Tor,
I have a DI30GB Onstream IDE drive. The problem with this drive is that the
drive itself doesn't have any errorhandling/search capabilities as a 'standard'
tape device has. Therefore these things should be implemented in a LKM, just
as the linux driver does.
So far I managed to make tar work, dump etc. won't work although I've heard
succes stories of them too. Since currently nothing like error checking etc. is
supported it won't be a reliable backup device for *BSD; Better go with something
else. I know this sounds dull and you've invested your money in the drive
but not able to restore your data when things go really wrong isn't exactly fun ...
Anyway, the drive expects 32kb transfers and won't write anything else; you can
try dd if=device of=/dev/ast0 bs=32k or, which works for me:
tar -cyvf /dev/ast0 -b 64 /partition
mind the -b 64, tar counts in 512 blocks so 64*512=32Kb. Fire up some extra
xterms or vterms and start 'tail -f /var/log/messages' and 'systat -vmstat 1'
so you can monitor what the drive is doing.
Whenever the drive encounters an error on the tape there's no way you
can kill the open device (at least mine keeps hanging :( ) so keep in mind
that you probably have to reboot the box after testing this.
Maybe someone can look at the linux driver and port it to *BSD. That should
make things less complicated, but will be quite difficult since afaik the linux
driver is a closed binary build by Onstream. Maybe a _lot_ of complaining to them
will help speed things up.
Good luck,
Kind regards,
--
Axel Scheepers
UNIX System Administrator
email: axel@axel.truedestiny.net
a.scheepers@iae.nl
http://axel.truedestiny.net/~axel
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