virtual tape? (anyway to do this for free)?

[Bob Brown_1]

Is there any built-in (or freeware) way to direct a process that is expecting to write to tape on hpux to instead go to a disk file? I'm not looking for a full virtual tape solution, just something for a database reorg process (writes the tape and then reads it back in).
(file will be >2GB in size).

thanks.
-Bob

[Peter Godron]

Bob,
you can use fbackup and frestore to a file, with the -f option.

See man frecover
option -f

fbackup -i /usr -f - | (cd /mnt; frecover -Xrf -)

just replace the - after -f with a file.
Best testing it on your own system first!

[Bob Brown_1]

I'm not looking to run fbackup...its an interbase reorg process that is expecting to write to a tape and then read it back in...any ideas on whether other processes like this one can be tricked into writing to disk instead of tape?

thanks.

-Bob

[Ivan Ferreira]

Maybe you can use a fifo file. For example, in this case, I will use a fifo to generate an "on the fly" compressed tar file:

cd /dev/rmt
mkfifo 0m
gzip < 0m > /opt/backup.tar.gz &
tar cvf /dev/rmt/0m /etc

[Peter Godron]

Bob,
how does the system currently work i.e. how do you specify the tapedrive it is going to right to?
Have you tried specifying a non-existent file in /dev/rmt ?