Quick tape Q

[Toby Ragsdale]

How can I get the date info from a tape? Date tape last writen to, file dates on tape etc.?

HPUX 11
A400
DDS3

Seems a simple request, I just cant find it anywhere. I tryed... Really.. not trying to waste anyones time.

Thanks
TBR

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi,

What kind of tape is it?
If it is an ignite tape there must be a file called:
make_recovery.last somewere in /var/opt/ignite/???....
If it is a tar tape you can use the tar tvf /dev/rmt/*m command
could you provide more info please?

Regards,

Gideon

[Patrick Wallek]

It depends entirely on what utility was used to write the tape. Was it fbackup, tar, cpio, pax (make_tape_recovery), ftio, some other backup utility?

Your question can't be answered until we know that information.

[Toby Ragsdale]

I am using SAM for automated backups. That would be fbackup, would it not?

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Yes, that would be fbackup.

To get what you want you need to use 'frecover'. You can have frecover to recover the Index (-I option) file and/or the Volume header (-V option) from the tape. 'man frecover' for more information.

[Toby Ragsdale]

Patrick,

Thanks, that looks like exactley what im looking for... except...

# frecover -V /vol1/tape.tmp
frecover(5403): Unable to open or identify device at /dev/rmt/0m

frecover(5405): unable to open /dev/rmt/0m
frecover(5406): Do you wish to continue? (^[yY]/^[nN])

Thoughts?

[Bill Hassell]

Since you did not specify -f for the device file, frecover used the default device file /dev/rmt/0m and apparently whatever was there is now gone. To find the device file for your tape:

/usr/sbin/ioscan -knfC tape

You can use any of device files listed. Then type:

frecover -V - -f /dev/rmt/WhatEver

The volume header is very short, less than one screen of data. The -I option is the complete table of contents so it may be thousands of lines long.

[Toby Ragsdale]

Perfect!

Thanks all.

TBR