tape restore

[John Ramsay_2]

If I back up a 4gb hard drive can I restore to a swapped in 9gb hard drive? Why is no one answering my questions?

[Patrick Wallek]

Yes, you can. I would be sure to do the make_tape_recovery tape with the -I option so that it comes up interactively when you boot from the tape. Then you can go through the menus and make sure it is installing to the 9GB disk and change the VG parameters (like MAX PE per PV, PE SIZE, etc) if necessary.

[John Ramsay_2]

In this command:
make_tape_recovery -a /dev/rmt/?mn -I -v -x inc_entire=vg00

Where does the -I go?
also since I got you here can you answer a script question?

[John Ramsay_2]

duh...

[John Ramsay_2]

If I have an error and I try something else does the tape automatically rewind? it's very quiet.

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

The order of the options does not matter.

[Bill Hassell]

make_tape_recovery requires a no-rewind devicefile but I believe that the program performs a rewind at the beginning. However, ever since 1/2" magtapes went out of favor (you could actually see the tape moving), I rely on the mt command to do the right thing. So my make_tape_recovery script starts with

mt /dev/rmt/... status

to check that the tape is actually present and not write-protected. Then I'll issue mt...rewind and follow that with the make_tape_recovery command. I then test the exit code and send a copy of the script's stdout+stderr by email to the sysadmin pool. If the return code is not zero, I rewind the tape, and if the code = 0 then I issue the mt...offline command to pop out the tape (protecting the tape from accidentlal overwrite). By scripting the entire process, I don't have to remember the options and manually run mt commands.