Auto eject on a tape

[Ian Warner]

How do I get a Surestore dat 40 drive to eject it's tape when a backup has finished?
I am running 11.11.

Ta

Ian Warner

[Simon Hargrave]

You don't say how you're backing up (omniback, netbackup, fbackup,cpio, tar) however to rewind and eject a tape, you use: -

mt -f /dev/rmt/0mn offl

[Ian Warner]

Using SAM to run a scheduled backup


Ian

[MarkSyder]

If you use /dev/rmt/0mn it automatically ejects the tape.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Simon Hargrave · Accepted solution]

The SAM automated backup runs an fbackup via cron, using the sam script /usr/sam/lbin/br_backup

There are 3 ways to approach this:-

1. Create your own backup script which will perform the fbackup with your graph directly, then issue the mt offl command at the end of your script. This would be the best option.

2. Copy the br_backup script to an alternate location and edit it to include an offl. Change the crontab entry to point to this. Do NOT edit the file in-situ. It will be overwritten when SAM patches are later put on the server.

3. If you know your backups are always finished by a certain time, eg 7am, add an extra crontab at this time to run the offl. This however is not ideal eg if backups run late they will fail.

[Darren Prior]

Hi Ian,

Just a reminder that as you are using fbackup via SAM's br_backup script that you cannot use a no-rewind device file.

regards,

Darren.

[Fred Martin_1]

If you are using a shell script as I am, the method would be:

mt -t rew offl

I have a DLT drive so "offl" doesn't physically eject the tape, but the effect is the same. Software sees the tape as being ejected.

I don't recall if our DAT drive used to eject the tape physically - but I think it did.