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From: silver@s.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt
Subject: 6157 tape problems
Message-ID: <213600003@s.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 12 Sep 89 19:55:00 GMT
Lines: 37
Nf-ID: #N:s.cs.uiuc.edu:213600003:000:1257
Nf-From: s.cs.uiuc.edu!silver    Sep 12 14:55:00 1989


I am having a lot of trouble backing up my 6150.  I have a 6157-002
streaming tape drive, but to backup just the 250Meg used so far
takes 2 tapes and 3 hours.  In addition, some one must be here to
change the tape at the mid-way point.  Because of this, I only to
a whole dump once a month.  I will later have 800-900 Meg of disk
to backup, and 6-7 tapes and 9-11 hours of down time in unthinkable.

Lately there have been write errors on the drive, and the backup aborts.
Other times the backup stops and just asks to reinsert the same volume
(tape).  The backup continues, but gives no clue why (the tape is then
<50% full).

Are there any other (better/faster/more efficient) ways to backup
the entire system?  I have AIX 2.2.1 and some $$ to spend if the
tape drive should be changed.

The fulldump code looks something like:

tctl -f /dev/rmt0 reset
tctl -f /dev/rmt0 rewind
backup -0qvuf /dev/rmt4 /
backup -0qvuf /dev/rmt4 /dev/rhd1
backup -0qvuf /dev/rmt4 /dev/rhd2
backup -0qvuf /dev/rmt4 /dev/rhd3
etc....

Any suggestions are welcome.


Edward A. Silverstein
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
405 North Mathews Avenue
Urbana, Illinois  61801

CSNET, ARPA, BITNET:	silver@cs.uiuc.edu