fbackup and (single) DLT

[Phil Corchary]

situation: K570/HPUX 11.0 backed-up to single DLT using fbackup via cron script.

Datasize has increase, now backup goes beyond one tape, so backups are failing.

I need a way to sense this and alert a local operator to change tapes.

help?

[Antoanetta Naghiu]

Enable the log for fbackup, edit the crontab backup line with:
;tail -f fbackup.log > /dev/console (or the term where is the operator).
Fbackup has a grace period to wait before aborting...

[Phil Corchary]

Ok ... I guess I'm blind ... I looked over the fbackup man page, but I'm not seeing how to enable logging? (I'm not too familiar w/fbackup, so please forgive....)

Is the time-out value a function of fbackup, or of the DLT hardware or driver?

philc

[Phil Corchary]

my current fbackup is from a script called by cron that uses:
fbackup -f {device} -0 -i /

each time.

What if I use the -c (config file) option, and in the config file I specify the chgvol script. Then in the chgvol script, I specify simply echoing to the console a "Load Tape, press "y" type message?"

what type of return value does the chgvol script need to pass back?

philc

[Antoanetta Naghiu]

man fbackup and after that press /log
To get to the next appearance of the string go with n. (The same key as vi editor).

There is a -c option that let you configure the name of the config files.
/var/adm/fbackups is the usual used directory

The -I option is used for Index and -V for vol header.

So, fbackup -0 -g graph -f tape -I index -V volheader >log.file; tail -f logfile

[John Palmer]

Configure fbackup to use a large tape blocksize - try setting blocksperrecord to 64 in the config file.

Larger tape blocks will mean that you get more data onto the tape and depending on how much you've increased your data by may mean that it will still fit on one tape.

[James R. Ferguson]

Phil:

There is a way to do this. This is fbackup's 'chgvol' feature. Here are three documents to help you:

Document A4574368 "fbackup chgvol example"

Document A5299677 "fbackup: Is there a timeout when it asks for a second tape?"

Document KBAN00000401 "Example chgvol script for fbackup to control tape libraries"

John's comments on the configuration file's blocksperrecord is very germane. You can adjust this and other parameters and get better tape utilization. Do some testing yourself to find the best values.

...JRF...