backup

[Fadia Almarei]

Hi All

i want to know that if there is any apecial command for backup large files , and is there is any special option for the tar command for archiving large files
Regards,
Fadia

[Mobeen_1]

Fadia,
Have you tried man tar to see what probably suits things that you are trying to accomplish?

rgds
Mobeen

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello Fadia,

could you please give us some more context on your problem. What are you trying to do and what type of error do you receive? Disk to disk tar, tar to a tape...?

Greetings, Martin

[Francisco J. Soler]

Hi fadia,
If you mean that you need backup through several media devices, you can try:

http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/index.html
http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/download/contribute.html#rht80

Frank.

[Fred Ruffet]

If you mean "more than 2Gb files" by large files, tar have a limitation and cannot store thoses files.

If you have such files, you must use another backup program. I would suggest arkeia :
http://www.arkeia.com/ which is free for a linux server backuping itself. It handles correctly 2Gb on any filesystems and has a command line interface as well as a GUI. It can do from one-shot-backup to complex backup strategies with incrementals, retentions and so on...

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello,

the following

https://listman.redhat.com/archives/phoebe-list/2003-February/msg00832.html

seems to indicate that the 2GB file limit for tar was liftet latest with RH 8.

Greetings, Martin

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

To follow up on my self. The 2 GB file size limit was liftet for Gnu tar with release
1.13. See here

http://freshmeat.net/projects/tar/?branch_id=17853&release_id=56187

for details.

Greetings, Martin

[Fadia Almarei]

my problem is i v=connect an external DELL dlt scsi tape drive to my linux system and i want to do backup for my system on that tape drive and when i do the tar command the following error arise[root@RADIUS root]# tar cvf /dev/st0 /
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

lost+found/
backup/
backup/lost+found/
boot/
boot/lost+found/
boot/grub/
boot/grub/grub.conf
boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
boot/grub/menu.lst
boot/grub/device.map
boot/grub/stage1
boot/grub/stage2
tar: /dev/st0: Wrote only 0 of 10240 bytes
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
[root@RADIUS root]#


and when i do the tar command for a small file it work please help ,manly is the error from the tape drive or from the tar command

[Stuart Browne]

Have you tried another tape?

That's standard can't-write-to-the-tape errors, not tar.

Had it this morning on a DAT40 drive. Run the cleaning tape through, try another tape, see if the problem persists.

[Fadia Almarei]

Dear staurt

i change the tape and i get the same error i want to know what to do for that and for more i do the backup using dump and it gives me also error

thanks in advance

[Francisco J. Soler]

Hi Fadia,
try to exclude /proc in the tar command:

tar cvf /dev/st0 / --exclude /proc

Frank.

[Fadia Almarei]

sorry it does not work

[Fred Ruffet]

have you tried fsck ? or just tried to dd the file that is breaking the tar (it might not be the last printed by tar, but the next)

[Fadia Almarei]

it also does not work

[Francisco J. Soler]

Hi Fadia,
try this to see if is a tar problem or a tape problem:

find / -path '/proc' -prune -o -print | cpio -ocv > /dev/st0

to recover the backup:
cpio -icv < /dev/st0

to list the backup
cpio -itcv < /dev/st0

Frank.

[Fadia Almarei]

Dear Frank
Thanks for your help , when i do the command it give me the following result "[root@RADIUS dev]# find / -path /proc -prune -o -print | cpio -ocv > /dev/st0
/
/lost+found
/backup
/backup/lost+found
/boot
/boot/lost+found
/boot/grub
/boot/grub/grub.conf
/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
/boot/grub/menu.lst
/boot/grub/device.map
/boot/grub/stage1
Found end of tape. To continue, type device/file name when ready.


what should i do for that i think that the dlt tape drive is big enough to do my backup

[Francisco J. Soler]

Hi, Fadia

Check if the tape is not write protect, is a silly thing but sometimes is the problem.

Frank.

[Kiyoshi Miyake]

Hi, fadia.

Try to new DLT tape if you use used tape by some backup utility.
Some application set partition on tape.

or:
Use mt command for erase partition.
I don't know mt command well...

Thanks.

[Fadia Almarei]

Thanks All

i have solved the problem , it was that i put a terminator in the second port of the scsi tape drive (it is dual port ),thanks all again for your help

Regards,
Fadia