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From: Andrew Maltsev <am@px.f1.ru>
Message-Id: <199804041018.OAA29906@px.f1.ru>
Subject: Re: Tape backup technique
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980403190645.11299H-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu> from "Doug White" at "Apr 3, 98 07:07:35 pm"
To: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 14:18:54 +0400 (MSD)
Cc: am@amsoft.ru, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
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> > > Pretty much.  Thus the existence of the `mt' command.
> > 
> > Of course I'm using `mt' to rewind and jump over the files, but I see no
> > command to get tape position.
> 
> Why do you need it, btw?

Just to know. To plan what will fit and what was average compression
ration and so on. If it is impossible to know from streamer - why not to
do it in driver? Who does the search for eof, for example - streamer or
driver? If driver then it's easy to add such counter to driver I think..

I even attempted to eject the tape and see position, but the tape is
rewinded prior to eject.. Nice service :)

> > And yet another question - what to do if 0-level dump doesn't fit to one
> > tape?
> 
> dump will ask for another tape.

In reality it says something like "Cannot write, abort entire
backup process [yes/no] ?"
Hm.. I had not tried to answer `no', btw :)

Btw, I'd wrote more or less detailed plan for myself to do some kind of
tape helper - something that will always know what is on that tape and
help networked computers to access `tape server' reliably and easy.

Is it interested to someone except me? I'm busy now, but i can at least
continue think about it and may be implement it some time later..

Andrew.

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