Interactive Restore Query

[Jim Adamson]

Can anyone help me with a problem I have restoring a tape dump.

I have positioned the tape using the 'mt' command. I have started an interactive restore using 'restore -f /tape device'. I have added a lost file to the extract list. But when I type extract I am told that I 'have not read any tapes yet' and must 'specify a tape volume'. Restore suggests I start with the last volume and work forward to the first volume.

What are these volume numbers and how do I find out what these volume numbers are for my tape? I am using HP-UX10.20.
Thanks
Jim.

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

Did you position the tape using the no-rewind opton on mt ? (eg. mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn) You will need to. And the same for the restore command, use the no-rewind device (eg. restore f /dev/rmt/0mn). After youve added your files to extract then used the extract command when it asks for a volume (presuming you only have a 1 tape archive) just type in 0 for the volume (or 1 if 0 doesnt work).

[Devbinder Singh Marway]

Try the following :-

mt -t /dev/rmt/?mn rew (rewind)
mt -t /dev/rmt/?mn fsf ? (forward tape to desired location)

restore -ivf /dev/rmt/?mn ( i for interactive , if specified block size on original creation use b , value restore -ivbf 64)

Select 1 when prompted specify next volume

regards

Dev
(select files )

[Duane Gorder]

The dump/restore commands have been around for a very long time. Asking for the proper volume is not very useful when tapes hold an very large amount of data and the file system that spans tapes is very rare. But that part of dump/restore is from when tapes held only a few megabytes each, and nobody seems to have removed it from the code. But then again maybe there are still shops out there still using the ancient media.