Exabyte 221L Auto Loader

CS Admins csadmins at rcservers.com
Mon May 9 06:15:59 PDT 2005


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Micheal Patterson" <micheal at tsgincorporated.com>
To: <freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org>; <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 12:39 PM
Subject: Exabyte 221L Auto Loader


> Is there anyone using this device with FreeBSD 4.x or 5.x? I'm new to 
> the
> world of auto-loaders and am curious if FreeBSD's tar / dump utilities 
> can
> support it properly for backing up of 3tb of data from various 
> partitions.
> If so, are there any specifics that I should be aware of when using 
> this
> device? Any recommendations on using other software other than tar or 
> dump
> to do this that are available in the ports tree?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
>
> Micheal Patterson
> Senior Communications Systems Engineer
> 405-917-0600
>
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Here's an update on this question.

In my situation, I have a Promise 15100 raid with 2 logical drives 
configured on it. 1.6t and 1.8t respectively.

Since these are different mounts, and I want to be able to back both of 
these up to one tape set, I've mounted them both into a single folder 
and then use gtar to back up that folder and it's contained slices.

I'm finding that the Exabyte 221L, so far, works well with FreeBSD 5.3 
(at least) provided the ch0 (library) is configured for either sequence1 
(single drive mode) or scsi.

In a single drive configuration, such as mine, if you wish to use the 
robotic arm in SCSI configuaration, mtx (from ports) is a good utility 
to help you with this library. There is one quirk about the 221L though 
that you need to be aware of, the mtx man page mentions it for the 220 
but, well, we don't always read the entire man page. The 221L, like the 
220, requires you to take the drive offline before performing tape move 
operations (mt offline).  Once done, you can manipulate the tapes as 
needed.

My current choice of utilities are:

gnutar (available from ports, allows for shell script to run at the end 
of a multitape session)
mtx (available in ports as a replacement to chio)

You'll need to run a multitape session via gnutar and have it run a 
script at the end of a session (--new-volume-script). The script can be 
as complex or as simple as you need it to be.

The basic script that I'm currently using is:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/mt offline
/usr/local/sbin/mtx next

This takes the drive offline, ejecting the tape, uses mtx to place 
current tape back in source slot then move to the next tape in series to 
the drive, loads it and exits. Then gtar will continue on it's mery 
little way until it reaches the end of tape again.

I'd like to thank those members of these 2 lists that replied both on 
and off list for their assistance in this.

--

Micheal Patterson
Senior Communications Systems Engineer
TSG Incorporated
405-917-0600

Confidentiality Notice:  This e-mail message, including any attachments,
is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain
confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use,
disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended
recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all
copies of the original message.




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