2 Chapter 35. Usage of floppy tape drives on Linux
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7 Chapter 35. Usage of floppy tape drives on Linux
12 Original text<albrecht.gebhardt@uni-klu.ac.at>
16 XML-conversion,Updates
19 Amanda now supports the ftape driver version 3.04d (see http://www-
20 math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape ). It adjusts the blocksize
21 automatically to 32k and supports QIC volume tables.
22 It uses only one open() call for writing backups to one tape, so the "busy"-
23 lamp of the drive will be on all the time. (With normal Amanda code it would be
24 off in pauses between two files written to tape.)
25 For volume table support you have to get libvtblc first (available at ftp://
26 pc02-stat.sci.uni-klu.ac.at/pub/Linux/libvtblc.) This library contains the
27 functions and subroutines from the vtblc utility, distributed with ftape.
28 (Maybe this library will be part of a future ftape package).
29 You have to set the raw tape device for volume table operations, usually /dev/
30 rawft0, either via configure --with-ftape-rawdevice= or with rawtapedev in
31 amanda.conf (configure checks for /dev/rawft[0-3], to get a guess for this
32 value). Dont forget to make this device read/writeable for your backup user.
33 For compilation you need the header files from ftape 3.04d in your include
35 The volumetable of a tape "amlabeled" TEST-VOL2 with 4 backups on it would look
36 like (listed with vtblc utility from ftape):
40 Nr Id Label Date Start End
43 0 VTBL TEST-VOL2 23:08:06 03/15/98 3 4 0.00
45 1 VTBL gamma //beta/C 0 00:00:00 03/15/98 5 374 0.68
47 2 VTBL gamma sda2 0 00:00:00 03/15/98 375 1029 1.21
49 3 VTBL alpha sda2 0 00:00:00 03/15/98 1030 1906 1.62
51 4 VTBL alpha sda6 0 00:00:00 03/15/98 1907 8092 11.45
53 5 VTBL Amanda Tape End 01:45:15 03/16/98 8093 8094 0.00
56 With lvtblc, currently available with the libvtblc library, you can list the
57 complete label strings (44 characters, not only the first 22 characters as with
65 0 VTBL TEST-VOL2 23:08:06 03/15/98
66 1 VTBL gamma //beta/C 0 00:00:00 03/15/98
67 2 VTBL gamma sda2 0 00:00:00 03/15/98
68 3 VTBL alpha sda2 0 00:00:00 03/15/98
69 4 VTBL alpha sda6 0 00:00:00 03/15/98
70 5 VTBL Amanda Tape End 01:45:15 03/16/98
72 Note on datestamps: volume 0 (Amanda label): reflects the time of starting the
73 backup volume i (backup files): Amanda datestamps of the backup files last
74 volume (end marker) : reflects the time of finishing the backup
75 I tested this on a Linux machine (P90 / 96Mb RAM / 256 Mb swap) with two other
76 clients (Linux / WfW) using
78 * Linux Kernel 2.0.33,
82 with an internal Iomega Ditto 3200 (TR-3) drive attached to an Iomega Ditto
83 Dash controller (at 2000 Kbps). My tapetype follows:
85 define tapetype DITTO-TR3 {
86 comment "Iomega DITTO 3200 Travan 3 tape drives"
88 filemark 29 kbytes # ???
89 speed 256 kbytes # = 2000 Kbit/s ?
96 Filemarks are not written to the tape (they are written to the header segment
97 and use there 128 byte), so their size could even be 0. But a tape segment
98 takes at least 29 kb (+3 kb ecc-code = 32 kb), so in the worst case an eof will
103 Refer to http://www.amanda.org/docs/zftape.html for the current version of this
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108 Chapter 34. Y2K Compliancy Home Part VII. Appendixes