[PLUG] advice on buying a cheap DAT Drive

[robinsoq]

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Wil Cooley <wcooley at nakedape.cc>
Reply-To: plug at lists.pdxlinux.org
Date:  13 Jul 2003 17:19:16 -0700

>On Sun, 2003-07-13 at 16:57, Russell Senior wrote:
>> >>>>> "Sean" == Sean Whitney <sean at fork.com> writes:
>> 
>> Sean> [...] and I can backup through a ssh tunnel which is pretty
>> Sean> cool.
>> 
>> I can do that with /bin/tar too, e.g.:
>> 
>>   mt -f /dev/nst0 setblk 32768
>>   mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind
>>   ssh -l root <remote-hostname> 'tar -C / -clf - .' | dd of=/dev/nst0 obs=32768
>>   mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind
>>   dd if=/dev/nst0 ibs=32768 | ssh -l root <remote-host> 'tar -C / -dlf -'
>
>I think you can just set
>
># RSH=`which ssh`
># export RSH
>
>and then use
>
># tar cf hostname:/dev/ntape0
>
>At least, this is the way dump(8) works and I think GNU tar implements
>it too.
>
>Wil
>-- 
>Wil Cooley                                 wcooley at nakedape.cc
>Naked Ape Consulting                        http://nakedape.cc
>* * * * * *  Linux Services for Small Businesses  * * * * * *
>*       Easy, reliable solutions for small businesses       *
>*    Naked Ape Business Server http://nakedape.cc/r/sms     *
>
>

Okay, cool.  Question  I have is are your backing up the system 
your currently running or do you have to switch to another system 
to backup the one your currently running which has network support?  
I'm trying to use a Linux from scratch system as a second system to 
switch to to backup my main one.  Is there a way to bring the main 
system down to runlevel 1 and a second Linux system up to runlevel 
3 without rebooting the computer?  Are there flags for tar and dump 
to allow backing up full the current running system at runlevel 
3 or 5 without dropping to runlevel 1?

I assume rmt needs rsh and it looks like rsh can be set to ssh.

As far as tape backup, I just got 4 DI30 tapes Verbatim generics for 
around $100 which are supposed to be able to store 30 megs a piece of 
2:1 compressed data.

The tapes are expernsive but I got the drive for $150.  The secret is to 
buy at least six tapes if you get a DI30 drive now.  Everything else I've 
looked at for tape drives appears to be in the $800 to $1000+ range.  
Some models may be changers though I've heard strong recommendations to 
stay away from Travans.  The thing about libraries, tape drives that hold 
multiple tapes, is that you can't span a dump over multiple tapes.  The 
latter can supposedly be solved by using the fcut utility with tar to 
cut a large dump into pieces that will fit on individual tapes.  With 
tape drives you can either have cheap media or a cheap drive.  If you 
can afford it, an expensive drive is probably the better way to go as 
the whole point of a tape system over say hard drives is being able to 
buy a lot of tapes and do multiple backups.  Well, tapes supposedly
last longer and hold up better than hard drives too :-)

IBM has a technology called honeycomb and I imagine with a sheet of steel
and the proper laser you could manipulate atoms on the steel plate and store 
an incredible amount of data that way.  The latter technology may end up
being similar to a CD-R technology, then again it's not that hard to recycle
a plate of steel to a fresh mirror finish and reuse it.

     --  Michael C. Robinson