Tape backups on linux

http://www.whoopis.com/howtos/tapebackup.html

I found this simple article that summarizes in a few brief instructions the minimum to govern a tape drive.

The world believes it to be outdated, to me they seem however still irreplaceable. A 400GB tape drive is always a good solution to the problems of second-level backup.

Since there are now sites, tomorrow no, report some of the most important notes without many explanations:

cat/proc/scsi/scsi

Device name: Will have “s” in the name because it’s scsi

/dev/nstx

= non-rewindable tape scsi

/dev/stx

= rewindable

x = number We want/dev/st0, the first scsi rewindable tape device.

To check drive status:

Mt-f/dev/st0 status
Mt-f/dev/st0 rewind
Mt-f/dev/st0 erase
Mt-f/dev/st0 rewind
Mt-f/dev/st0 lock #prevent hitting eject before it finished
tar-cvzf/dev/st0/path/to/stuff/to/back/up/
Mt-f/dev/st0 unlock
Mt-f/dev/st0 eject