Transferring dump file to tape?

Kris Kennaway kris at obsecurity.org
Mon May 16 12:03:47 PDT 2005


On Mon, May 16, 2005 at 01:52:18PM -0500, Viren Patel wrote:
> > On Mon, May 16, 2005 at 11:36:18AM -0500, Viren Patel
> > wrote:
> >> Hello. I am using 'dump' to backup client filesystems to
> >> a
> >> disk file on an NFS mounted partition, e.g.
> >>
> >>    dump -0aLu -f /bk/var-20050516 /var
> >>
> >> Now I'd like to take the backup file (var-200500516) and
> >> move it to tape (on the NFS server). However I'd like
> >> the
> >> tape to have the data just as if it had been created
> >> directly by 'dump', e.g.
> >>
> >>    dump -0aLu -f /dev/nsa0 /var
> >>
> >> Any way to do this? I could use rdump/rmt to backup
> >> directly to the remote tape, but I am doing it this way
> >> to
> >> do fast disk-based backups during night and move to
> >> slower
> >> tapes during day. For normal restores I can use
> >> NFS-based
> >> files but have tapes for single-user-mode type restores.
> >> Thanks.
> >
> > You can use dd to write a file to a device (e.g. tape).
> >
> > Kris
> >
> 
> I thought so too, but it doesn't work. When I issue
> 
>    dd if=var-20050516 of=/dev/nsa0
> 
> I get the following error:
> 
> dd: /dev/nsa0: Invalid argument
> 1+0 records in
> 0+0 records out
> 0 bytes transferred in 0.000786 secs (0 bytes/sec)
> 
> Since 'dump' works with /dev/nsa0 I am not sure what the
> problem is.

You need to specify a block size compatible with your tape drive,
e.g. 32k.

Kris
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