Backup using DDS1 with fback/frecover

[Roger Lavender]

Is there anyway to use these commands (Fbackup/frecover) and span tapes in an unattended backup session using a DDS1 Autodat Tape Drive?

[Joseph C. Denman · Accepted solution]

Hi Roger,

It has been a while since I used fbackup/frecover, but I use to use /usr/sam/lbin/br_backup to backup my systems. It uses fbackup. There is an option you can pass to fbackup to tell it what to do when an end of tape is encountered. If you pass it

mt -t /dev/rmt/??? offl

the autodat will load the next tape.

However, I do not know of any command to move backwards. ie move from tape 2 to tape 1. This only works to move from tape 1 to tape 2.

Hope this helps.

...jcd...

[Roger Lavender]

Thanks Joe......your answer put me on the right track.

Roger

[Bill Hassell]

fbackup has (and you must always use) a config file which can define the action to take place at the end of tape. In the config file, put the keyword chgvol followed by the FULL pathname of a script that will change your tape(s). The command to use for changing tapes is mc.

A sample script called loadmedia is available from:

ftp://contrib:9unsupp8@hprc.external.hp.com/sysadmin/coolscripts/

Get a copy of loadmedia and also autosum. Be sure to set the env variable LIBRARY=/dev/rmt/xx where xx is your robotic arm or picker device file.

Always use a config file for fbackup (the -c option) as the record sizes and other parameters are far too small for today's tape drives:

blocksperrecord 256
records 32
checkpointfreq 1024
readerprocesses 4
maxretries 5
retrylimit 5000000
maxvoluses 200
filesperfsm 2000
chgvol /usr/contrib/bin/chgvol.cmd
error /var/adm/fbackuperr.log