Comments on: Linux Tape Backup With mt And tar Command Howto

By: Abdull

Abdull — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:22:15 +0000

ubunut/linux has been left beinhd quite a bit. i’m open to any helping out especially for linux and macos

By: Poppy

Poppy — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:10:47 +0000

Just to avoid snomoee having to spend a few hours restoring from backups; The first example would copy the files from server Y to server X, not the other way around.

By: mahesh

mahesh — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 04:58:19 +0000

Hi all,

Please tell me how to find free space in the tape drive.
And how to restore the backup from the tape drive ( have to move the backup to other server).
Please give me clarity about tape drive information because iam confused about tape drive.

Thanks in adv…

By: martin

martin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:43:09 +0000

Hi,

My files are backed up as
srv/scripts/…
srv/www/.,..
srv/blablabla…

How to restore file srv/www/site1 to home dir?
Is it just
cd TOTHEDIRIWANTFILETOBERESTORED
# tar -xzf /dev/st0 srv/www/site1
?
Thank you

By: Marsupilamies

Marsupilamies — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 07:53:12 +0000

I’ve noticed a trouble when you’re not on english system (for exemple, mine, french):
NOW=$(date +”%a”) gives not “Mon” for monday but “Lun.”
Maybe you can change NOW=$(date +”%a”) by NOW=$(date +”%u”), so $NOW will be a number (the same in each system).

And just change:
case $NOW in
Mon ) full_backup;;
Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri) partial_backup;;
*) ;;

by:
case $NOW in
1) full_backup;;
2|3|4|5) partial_backup;;
*) ;;

Hope it’ll help ;-)

By: Lucy Clark

Lucy Clark — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:16:17 +0000

I need help writing a script for Linux that will copy everything from tape to system directory. I built a Linux box with 3 TB hardware space. Now I have 60 tapes to move data from on to the system directory. I am using the following commands in order
1) mt –f /dev/st0 rewind
2) tar –xvf /dev/st0
3) tar –xvf /dev/st0 fsf (Using this to move to the next segment of the tape)
and then
4) tar -xvf/dev/st0

I keep repeating steps 3 and 4 until the end of the tape. This is very cumbersome. Being a nubie with Linux I am not sure how to simply the process. I am thinking there has to be a way of having the above in shell script or a command that copies everything from tape to system directory of the new box.
Thanks for your help

By: Camilo Macias

Camilo Macias — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:14:09 +0000

Hi everyone!!!!
I’m trying to record my Backp in a DAT 72 tape.

I’m using the following command:

tar cvMf /dev/nst0 $(date –date=’1 month ago’ +’%B”%Y’)

and in some part of the recording… shows the message:

Prepare volume #2 for `/dev/nst0′ and hit return:

I know it’s an stupid question, but….
I’ve done everything to eject “volume #1″ from the drive,
but anything works….
I’ve pushed “Enter”, but, it just read the same tape,
and shows the message again:

repare volume #3 for `/dev/nst0′ and hit return:

I’ve pushed the button “eject” right from the drive, nothing happens..
I’ve writen the eject command as follows:

mt -f /dev/nst0 eject

But once again…. nothing happens…

Am I doing something wrong??
Your support and guidance will be very helpfull.

Thanks!

pdt: Sorry for my horrible english! I’m from Bogota, Colombia.

By: Jane

Jane — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 05:39:24 +0000

I tried using the multiple tape option. Since my data is now bigger than my tape. However, it does not prompt me to put in the next tape the backup would just stop. Is there a way to pause and wait for the next tape to be inserted?

Cheers!

By: Chandrakant

Chandrakant — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:52:54 +0000

Hello,
I am using IBM Server with OS RHEL ver 5.0
I am using tar command to take the backup as follows
tar -cvfr /dev/st0 —file names—
This is appending the files to earlier backups no of times.
How to list out all files available in the dat?
How to restore the files which have appended no of times. i.e. 2,3,4,5 —.
Will you help me with the examples.

By: Gopinath

Gopinath — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:31:32 +0000

Hello ,

thanking for this help menu… How we check the size of tape after writing or tack backup files …

By: Yusoff

Yusoff — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 06:15:43 +0000

Very useful article.

Just one thing to add. I tried the various commands above. For my end, when I run the command:-
# tar -clpMzvf /dev/nst0 /home
I got the following error:-
Cannot use Multi-volume compressed archive.

So I had to drop the “z” before it runs.
Just wondering if you’d know the reason why. In any case, just to highlight.

By: mahesh

mahesh — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:12:41 +0000

part3/radhika/Maildir/.Sent/cur/1214196153.M754850P28131V0000000000001609I004A8301_0.webmail.srishti,S=60346:2,S

tar: /dev/st0: Cannot write: No space left on device

tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

no I want to know that in this case Backup is happen or not.

please Reply me as soon as possible.

By: Shafi Mohammad

Shafi Mohammad — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:33:17 +0000

# mount (disk name like = /dev/sdc1) /mnt/backup

By: Jorge

Jorge — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:07:07 +0000

You can’t use -M (multiple tapes) with -z option (compression).

$ tar -clpMzvf /dev/st0 /anydir
tar: Cannot use multi-volume compressed archives

By: k -dat software in redhat linux

k -dat software in redhat linux — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:05:44 +0000

my k-dat software is crashed
what is solution

By: Anoop

Anoop — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:10:51 +0000

I just wanted the TAR commands to Backup my data in etc folder to Tape media in Red hat enterprise 5.3 Linux OS. The mt option is not enabled then how can i verify and rewind the files written on the Tape ? How to enable the mt commands in Linux?

Please let me know about this. I can see both the Tape Drives in the Library online from the Host operating system ( Red hat Entrerprise Linux 5.3 ).

By: rafi

rafi — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:01:29 +0000

thanks to all of you

By: roberto

roberto — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:34:51 +0000

Thank you! Works great.

By: Paolo

Paolo — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:12:14 +0000

Thank you very much for this tutorial. It’s really useful.

Thanks to Daniele too.

By: Daniele

Daniele — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:48:41 +0000

For multiple tapes just add the -M option.

Typical use:
tar -clpMzvf /dev/st0 /anydir <— to backup to tape
tar -dlpMzvf /dev/st0 /anydir <— to compare
tar -xlpMzvf /dev/st0 /anydir <— to restore