fbackup incompatible with Qualstar/AIT drive?

[David Trusty]

Hi,

We just installed a Qualstar TLS 4222 tape unit with a SONY
AIT-2 drive.

I can access the tapes just fine using tar (/dev/rmt/1mb), but
fbackup always fails with this error:

fbackup(3038): output file /dev/rmt/1mb is not a valid device file for
backup

Here are the results from ioscan:

# ioscan -fnC tape
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
=======================================================================
tape 1 10/0/15/1.1.0 stape CLAIMED DEVICE SONY SDX-500C
/dev/rmt/1m /dev/rmt/c3t1d0BEST
/dev/rmt/1mb /dev/rmt/c3t1d0BESTb
/dev/rmt/1mn /dev/rmt/c3t1d0BESTn
/dev/rmt/1mnb /dev/rmt/c3t1d0BESTnb


Any ideas on how I can get fbackup to be happy with it?

Thanks in advance!!

David

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

fbackup is much more sophisticated than tar or cpio in that it takes advantage of high speed positioning found in DDS and DLT drives. As such, fbackup must be hardcoded with specific models of tape drives since many tape drives require special handling to access these positioning features. The AIT is essentially an 8mm tape drive with some added functionality.

So until a patch is created to support this drive, about all you can do is to pipe the tape output to isolate the true device file. Unfortunately you'll lose the high speed search and restore capability.