Taper FAQ Yusuf Nagree 11.. GGeenneerraall 11..11.. WWhhyy aarreenn''tt yyoouu rreessppoonnddiinngg ttoo mmyy ee--mmaaiill?? Like most people, I have to work to make a living. _T_a_p_e_r is done totally voluntarily and thus earns me no $$$s. If I haven't responded within a week, repost your message. If I still have not respond it means that I can't get hold of you, or I'm too busy. Rest assured that I do answer all e-mails eventually. 11..22.. WWhhyy iiss ttaappeerr aallrreeaaddyy uupp ttoo vveerrssiioonn 66 wwhheenn aa lloott ooff pprrooggrraammss tthhaatt hhaavvee bbeeeenn aarroouunndd aa lloott lloonnggeerr aarree oonnllyy uupp ttoo vveerrssiioonnss 22,,33 eettcc.... The version scheme for taper is version x.y.z xx major version number. Generally, new version archives will not be compatible with older versions. Thus, archives created under version 2 will not be usable under version 4, and version 4 archives are not compatible with version 5. There was no public release of version 1 or 3. Version 1 was a private development and version 3 was only released to a few alpha testers and then ditched because of problems yy minor version number. When new features are added, this number is increased. For example, the addition of new options would necessitate a minor version number increase zz bug fix. If the new version contains minor changes or bug fixes only, then only the bug fix number is increased. If a new feature is added, then the minor version number is increased. Taper was originally developed for my own use with no thought to public release. It was only after I saw many messages on USENET etc.. that I realized other people may benefit from taper and that's when I went public. Therefore, there has been no structured taper development plan. New features are being added as users request them, and as I try to respond as quickly as possible, taper versions have been appearing quite regularly (in some cases, days apart). Even now, I am not formulating a plan, but adding features in (rough) order of frequency that they are being requested, and how easily it can be implemented. 11..33.. DDooeess ttaappeerr ssuuppppoorrtt ppaarraalllleell ppoorrtt ddrriivveess ((eegg.. IIOOMMEEGGAA,, SSYYQQUUEESSTT,, BBaacckkppaacckk))?? Some parallel port drives are supported and full details on how to compile & install it can be found at http://www.torque.net/linux- pp.html. Thanks to Jeff Blaine for this information Note that the drive cannot do a fast fsf nor can it do a seek. Make sure the appropriate preferences are set correctly. 11..44.. DDooeess ttaappeerr ssuuppppoorrtt tthhee xxxxxxxxxx ddrriivvee?? Taper is user level program and not a low level I/O device driver. That means, it expects there to be a program that communicates between Linux and the tape drive. Examples are _f_t_a_p_e and _z_f_t_a_p_e for tape drives that connect to the floppy drive. SCSI tapes and IDE tapes are other examples of tape drives. With SCSI tape drives, chances are that support is available in the kernel. Similarly, IDE support is built into the kernel. For other tape drives, you will have to find out if there is a device driver available. Try the newsgroups for information. Alternatively, now that Linux is mainstream, your tape drive manufacturer may have released a driver or know of the whereabouts. 11..55.. DDooeess ttaappeerr ssuuppppoorrtt ttaappee ddrriivveess ggrreeaatteerr tthhaann 22 ggiiggaabbyytteess?? Taper will support tape drives up to 4GB in size. This is because Linux is a 32 bit system and the size of an integer is 32 bits - ie. 4GB. It is planned to increase this to 64 bits, however, doing so will render the new archives incompatible with the old 32 bit archives. Before making archive incompatibilities, I want to have a lot of changes I can make at once, to minimize the number of archive changes. As time is limited at the moment, it may be a while before this stage is reached. 22.. UUsseerr iinntteerrffaaccee 22..11.. HHooww ddoo II ddee--sseelleecctt aa ffiillee iinn bbaacckkuupp?? Use the TAB keys to go to the selected files box, move the cursor (using the arrow keys) to the item you wish to de-select and then press 'u' or 'U' and after confirmation, the file will be de-selected. Alternatively, you can press 'u' or 'U' on the file in the selected files box or the directory box. 22..22.. HHooww ddoo II ddee--sseelleecctt aa ffiillee iinn rreessttoorree?? The same as above. 22..33.. HHooww ddoo II mmoovvee bbeettwweeeenn YYEESS aanndd NNOO iinn mmeessssaaggee bbooxxeess?? You can press 'y', 'Y', 'n', 'N' to select yes or no directly. Alternatively, use TAB or spacebar to move the highlight between YES and NO. Press ENTER when the highlight is on what you wish. 22..44.. HHooww ddoo II eexxcclluuddee aa ssuubbddiirreeccttoorryy To facilitate incremental backups on an ever changing UN*X directory tree, when you select a directory for backup, taper only stores the directory name, not its contents of subdirectories. This means that it is not possible to select a directory (eg. /usr) and then enter the directory and then unselect a subdirectory (eg. /usr/tmp). If you try and do this, taper will give you an error message. There is a way around this, however, using the exclude directories preference. Enter backup preferences, and in the exclude directories preference, type the name(s) of the directories you don't want to backup (in the example above, you would type /usr/tmp). Multiple directories should be separated with a space. Then, when taper comes accross /usr/tmp in the backup, it will not back it up. Note that all subdirectories under /usr/tmp will also be excluded from the backup. 22..55.. WWhhyy ddooeess tthhee ddiissppllaayy iinn vveerriiffyy//bbaacckkuupp//ffuullll rreessttoorree aappppeeaarr jjeerrkkyy aanndd mmiisssseess ffiilleess?? To make taper run faster, the display is updated every second. Since taper can transfer small files to/from the tape device quicker than this, taper doesn't display them. There is a substantial improvement in backup performance using this technique. 33.. CCoommppiilliinngg 33..11.. WWhheerree ddoo II ggeett tthhee llaatteesstt nnccuurrsseess?? It is available from ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses/ncurses-4.1.tgz. You will need at least ncurses 1.9.6 to compile taper. Earlier versions will NOT work. Later version will. It is also available from sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux/libs. Please do not use sunsite if you have a close by mirror since it is very heavily loaded. Taper also requires the forms library (which comes with ncurses). Compile ncurses and then do: rm /usr/include/form.h rm /usr/lib/libform.a rm /usr/lib/libform_g.a cp ncurses-xx/form.h /usr/include cp ncurses-xx/lib/libform.a /usr/lib cp ncurses-xx/lib/libform_g.a /usr/lib 33..22.. II ccoommppiillee aanndd ggeett mmaannyy eerrrroorrss ssaayyiinngg ANSI does not support long long. Don't worry about that. This means that you are using early kernels in which the header files were not strictly ANSI compliant. This shouldn't affect taper. 33..33.. WWhhyy ddoo II ggeett aa ggcccc ffaattaall ssiiggnnaall 1111 mmeessssaaggee wwhheenn ccoommppiilliinngg ttaappeerr I have taken this straight from the GCC-FAQ: 30) What does the message "Internal compiler error: cc1 got fatal signal 11,4" mean ? Ans: Gcc is probably the biggest memory hog you likely to run on your machine and it will surely eat up a lot of your RAM. Usually a fatal signal 11 will mean some sort of parity errors in your RAM or other hardware faults. I had this once when `cc1' got corrupted due to a race condition and bad blocks on my hard disk. There have also been reports that overheating chips, (not french fries), can also produce such errors. And watch for poor IDE controller/drive combos that are being run faster than the standard 8MHz AT bus clock. These can give the same errors by causing corruption of the swap space. Usually, a signal 11 (segmentation violation) means that a process tried to access memory out of its process space, or tried to write into a read-only location. Sometimes, this signal is caused by software bugs, not by hardware faults (or your system would hang repeatedly, because the same thing happened to the kernel). With gcc 2.3.3, some people could reproduce a lot of "signal 11"'s. A "fatal signal 4" has been reported to be generated due to lack of memory (happened on a 4MB system). Also it can mean a failure in one of the `ld' or `as' stages. Try recompiling whatever with a -v flag to gcc and see if it is failing in one of the cc1, cpp, as or ld stages possibly. I will also add that sometimes it is due to the fact that gcc can't find the libraries. Make sure your libraries are in a location accessible to gcc (and that they are readable), and if not, change the LINK_LIB path in the Makefile. 33..44.. WWhheenn ccoommppiilliinngg,, tthhee ccoommppiilleerr ccoommppllaaiinnss tthhaatt iitt ccaannnnoott ffiinndd curses.h. Make sure that your curses.h file is in /usr/include. Some older versions of ncurses places it in a directory called /usr/include/ncurses. If this is the case, you have two options: Move all the files in /usr/include/ncurses to /usr/include OR Change the line INCLUDE= your Makefile.common to INCLUDE = -I/usr/include/ncurses 33..55.. II ggeett eerrrroorr mmeessssaaggeess wwaattttrroonn aanndd wwaattttrrooffff nnoott ffoouunndd wwhheenn ccoommppiill-- iinngg.. You do not have the correct curses.h header file. Make sure that you have the latest curses.h file and there are no old ones lying around. 33..66.. II aamm ggeettttiinngg eerrrroorrss ssuucchh aass syntax error before `int' while com- piling. You are using an old linux kernel. To overcome this, in the Makefile.common file, there is a line CFLAGS_NOLNK = -ansi Change this line to CFLAGS_NOLNK = 33..77.. WWhhyy ddoo II ggeett aann eerrrroorr aabboouutt nnoott bbeeiinngg aabbllee ttoo ffiinndd form.h when compiling? You need the forms package that comes with ncurses. See above for how to get the latest ncurses package. Note that you need the ncurses sources - getting the binaries alone often does not contain the form.h file that you require. 33..88.. II ggeett aann eerrrroorr :: compress/gzip.h: conflicting types for 'base- name' when compiling taper This means that you are using C libraries that are too old. Ideally, upgrade your C libraries. Alternatively, you have to edit the file gzip.h found in the compress subdirectory of taper. Find the line: extern char *basename OF((char *fname)); and change it so it reads: /* extern char *basename OF((char *fname)); */ and try compiling taper again. 44.. PPrroobblleemmss iinn bbaacckkuupp aanndd rreessttoorree 44..11.. II kkeeeepp oonn ggeettttiinngg tthhee eerrrroorr mmeessssaaggee Device or resource busy while trying to open backup device. +o Make sure that another user is not using the tape drive. +o Make sure that no processes that use the tape drive are running in the background. +o If you are using a floppy controller, make sure that there are no floppy drives mounted. 44..22.. II ggeett aa No such device error when trying to backup or restore. You have not enabled support for your tape drive. If you have a SCSI tape drive, make sure your kernel was compiled with support for CSI devices, support for SCSI tape drives, and support for your interface card, enabled. Also make sure that you have edited the Makefile and removed the '#' in the line '#DEFINES=-DHAVE_SCSI' and then re-compile and re-install. Also, if you have a SCSI drive, make sure that it is turned on when you boot Linux. If it isn't turned on when you boot, Linux won't register its presence, and even if you turn it on after, it may still not work. If you have a floppy tape drive, make sure you have ftape, and you have installed it with "insmod ftape.o". 44..33.. WWhhyy ddooeess ttaappeerr ssaayy Rewinding tape for a flash and then before it starts to read, takes a long time to start actually read. This is the way the ftape/zftape driver works. When taper (or anyone) does a request for the tape to be rewound or fast forwarded, it doesn't actually move the tape at that point - it just remembers that the tape needs to be rewound/fast forwarded. When a read/write command is given, then the tape is actually moved. So, when taper issues a rewind, the driver instantly returns to taper, but then when taper issues a read, then the tape is positioned - hence it looks like it is taking a long time to read. This is why "Rewinding tape" only stays for a second, but before the read can begin, the tape has to be physically moved. 44..44.. WWhhyy ddooeess ttaappeerr ssaayy Tape drive type has not been set when started You must tell taper what type of tape drive you have. There are several types taper supports. You start taper like taper -T SCSI (taper -T s) or taper -T ftape (taper -T f) or taper -T zftape (taper -T z) or taper -T removable (taper -T r) or taper -T file (taper -T l) or taper -T ide (taper -T i) depending on what type of tape drive you have. You can then save this to a preference file using the menu option so you don't have to start taper like this again. Note that you can use the shortened version shown in brackets. Alternatively, you can set the environment variable, TAPE_TYPE to scsi, zftape, removable, ide, file or ftape. 55.. PPrroobblleemmss bbaacckkiinngg uupp 55..11.. WWhheenneevveerr II ttrryy ttoo sseelleecctt aa ffiillee oorr ddiirreeccttoorryy ffoorr bbaacckkuupp,, II ggeett tthhee eerrrroorr mmeessssaaggee _t_t _F_i_l_e _i_s _o_n _e_x_c_l_u_s_i_o_n _l_i_s_t//.. You have extraneous spaces in your exclude directory and/or exclude files preferences. There must be no leading or trailing spaces in the preferences. Additionally, each file/directory (if any) entry must be separated by one space only. 55..22.. II aamm mmiidd--wwaayy tthhrroouugghh bbaacckkiinngg uupp iinn tthhee ddiirreeccttoorryy //pprroocc aanndd II ggeett ffuunnnnyy mmeessssaaggeess ssuucchh aass -7% done and the program seems to hang? The /proc directory does not contain files. It contains run-time system information, such as the environment of running processes, an image of system memory etc.. Therefore, you should not need to backup the /proc directory. If you do, you will get spurious results such as the above. See _T_A_P_E_R_._T_X_T for how to automatically exclude the /proc system. 55..33.. WWhheenn ddooiinngg bbaacckkuuppss tthhaatt ttaakkee mmoorree tthhaann oonnee ttaappee,, wwhheenn iitt rreeaacchheess tthhee eenndd ooff tthhee ttaappee,, ttaappeerr sseeggmmeennttaattiioonn ffaauullttss.. Taper can't correctly work out the end of tape on some tape drives. If the above occurs with you, your tape drive is one of those. Go to the preference menu, and under tape drive preferences, tell taper the size of your tape drive. Note that taper needs the UNCOMPRESSED size of the tape drive. Subtract about 10% from the manufacturers stated to account for formatting etc.. (eg. if your tape drive is 120MB, tell taper it is 108MB). 55..44.. AAfftteerr ddooiinngg aa bbaacckkuupp oorr mmkkiinnffoo,, ttaappeerr eexxiissttss ssaayyiinngg Unable to create info file. Check that taper is able to create the info file directory (the default is /$HOME/.taper_info). If it can't, taper generates this error. Reasons include no disk space, and you don't have permission to. Note that after this error, the backup is still intact. You just have to fix the problem and then select mkinfo, not do the whole backup again. 55..55.. TTaappeerr wwoorrkkss ffiinnee iinn iinntteerraaccttiivvee mmooddee,, bbuutt wwhheenn II rruunn iitt ffrroomm aa ccrroonn jjoobb,, II ggeett aa Can't start backup child error mailed to me. As explained above, taper uses two ancillary program. Note that cron uses a different path than the normal one. Generally, it is only /bin, /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin. Either copy bg_backup and bg_restore to one of those directories, or make links in these directories or change the path. 55..66.. TTaappeerr ssaayyss Can't start backup child. Taper uses two ancillary programs, bg_backup and bg_restore to handle background compression. Make sure that you have these two programs, and that they are in the directory you started taper in or in a directory on your path. 55..77.. TTaappeerr ssaayyss Can't start backup child when running under a cron job. For some installations, cron does not have /sbin and /usr/sbin in its search path. I don't know why. The solution is to put bg_backup, bg_restore and taper in /usr/bin or /usr/sbin. 55..88.. II nnoottiiccee tthhaatt zzffttaappee hhaass aa ccoommpprreesssseedd mmooddee.. SShhoouulldd II uussee ttaappeerr ccoommpprreessssiioonn oorr zzffttaappee ccoommpprreessssiioonn If you use zftape compression, you may find your backups will be quicker, and they certainly will be easier on system load. However, should a segment of tape become corrupted, then it will be virtually impossible to reconstruct your backup and retrieve any files beyond the corrupted segment. If you use taper's compression, however, it may be possible to retrieve data beyond the corrupted section, depending on exactly which pieces of data were corrupted. This is because taper compresses each file individually and hence, the corruption won't affect other files. 55..99.. WWhhyy ddooeess ttaappeerr sseegg ffaauulltt aatt tthhee eenndd ooff aa bbaacckkuupp oorr wwhhiillee uuppddaatt-- iinngg tthhee hheeaaddeerr ffiilleess.. There seems to be a bug in either libc 5.3.12 and/or binutils 2.6.0.12. To find out what version of libc you are using, do a ls -l /lib/libc.so.5 and you will see what version of libc you are using. To find out what version of binutils you are using, do a ld -v which will print your version. If you are using one or both of the above, then you can do one of the following: +o Downgrade your C libraries to 5.2.18 +o Upgrade your binutils to 2.6.0.14 Option 2 is the easier (and more logical choice), however, it may not work all the time. Option 1 should always work. 55..1100.. WWhhyy iiss ttaappeerr nnoott ccoommpprreessssiinngg mmyy ffiilleess eevveenn tthhoouugghh II hhaavvee ccoomm-- pprreessssiioonn ttuurrnneedd oonn?? The most common cause is that taper cannot find bg_backup which is the program that compresses programs in the background. Make sure that you have this program compiled and either in the current directory or on your path. 55..1111.. II aamm uussiinngg _f_t_a_p_e vveerrssiioonn >>== 33 aanndd ggeettttiinngg ssoommee ssppuurriioouuss rreessuullttss.. _f_t_a_p_e version >= 3 is actually a combination of the old _f_t_a_p_e and _z_f_t_a_p_e. Therefore, if you are using _f_t_a_p_e version >= 3, you should start _t_a_p_e_r with the _z_f_t_a_p_e option (ie. taper -T z). 66.. PPrroobblleemmss rreessttoorriinngg 66..11.. AAfftteerr ddooiinngg aa rreessttoorree,, tthhee ppeerrmmiissssiioonnss oonn tthhee ffiilleess aarree ccoorrrreecctt,, bbuutt aallll tthhee ffiilleess aarree oowwnneedd bbyy tthhee uusseerr rruunnnniinngg rreessttoorree ((iiee.. oowwnneerrsshhiipp ooff ffiilleess aanndd ddiirreeccttoorriieess iiss nnoott ccoorrrreeccttllyy sseett)).. This will happen if a user other than root runs the restore program. Under UN*X, only the root can change the ownership of files. Therefore, if wish to restore the correct ownerships, run restore as root. If you set the --set-ownership preference off, then _t_a_p_e_r will not attempt to set the ownership of files after a restore. 66..22.. RReessttoorree ggiivvee mmee aa lloott ooff wwaarrnniinnggss aabboouutt uunnaabbllee ttoo sseett ttiimmeess,, aanndd ppeerrmmiissssiioonnss.. See above 66..33.. II bbaacckkeedd uupp uussiinngg ttaappeerr--55..11..33 oorr eeaarrlliieerr aanndd wwhheenn II ttrryy aanndd rreessttoorree,, nnoott aallll mmyy ffiilleess aarree bbeeiinngg pprriinntteedd oonn tthhee rreessttoorree ssccrreeeenn,, oorr ffuunnnnyy ffiilleennaammeess aappppeeaarr iinn mmyy rreessttoorree ssccrreeeenn.. There was an obscure bug in taper-5.0 to taper-5.1.3 which caused incorrect file counts to be occassionally written to the archive. Unfortunately, other than recreating the backup, this can't be rectified. However, if you run mkinfo on your archive, taper will create a 'fudged' info file that will allow you to use your archive normally. 66..44.. WWhhyy ddooeess rreessttoorree pprriinntt Can't give warning & error count. If you do not enable triple buffering, taper assumes that you haven't got SYSV_IPC support for shared memory aspects of SYSV_IPC. Taper restores in a child process in the background, independently of the main taper program and requires shared memory for the child to communicate with the main program. If you don't have shared memory, then the child can't communicate with the parent, and let the parent know how many errors the child encoutnered, hence the error message and warning message count will be incorrect. 66..55.. HHooww ddoo II rreessttoorree mmyy ffiilleess iinn tthhee ddiirreeccttoorryy ffrroomm wwhhiicchh tthheeyy wweerree oorriiggiinnaallllyy bbaacckkeedd uupp?? By default, taper will restore files into the current directory (the same as tar). Subdirectories will be created as necessary. For example, if you back up the /etc directory and then run taper from /home/joe and try and restore this archive, a directory called /home/joe/etc will be made and all files will be in this directory. To restore files from whence they came, start taper with the -r option like: taper -r / [rest of your options] Alternatively, you can use the restore preferences menu. Simply set the restore path preference to / 66..66.. II mmaakkee aa bbaacckkuupp aanndd aallll sseeeemmss wweellll,, bbuutt tthheenn wwhheenn II ttrryy ttoo rreessttoorree oorr vveerriiffyy,, ttaappeerr ssaayyss ``TThhiiss iiss nnoott aa ttaappeerr aarrcchhiivvee'' oorr ttaappeerr ssaayyss ``TThhiiss iiss ttaappee 00.. IInnsseerrtt ttaappee 11'' The most likely explanation is that you have not set up your rewinding & non-rewinding devices correctly. Look at the table below and check that your preference file has the correct devices set under tape drive preferences. rewinding non-rewinding ==================================================== ftape /dev/ftape /dev/nftape zftape /dev/qft0 /dev/nqft0 scsi /dev/st0 /dev/nst0 floppy a /dev/fd0 /dev/fd0 floppy b /dev/fd1 /dev/fd1 These device names may be different if you have configured your system differently. See the section in the docs about tape devices for further information. 66..77.. II mmaakkee aa bbaacckkuupp OOKK bbuutt wwhheenn II ttrryy aanndd rreessttoorree,, ttaappeerr ggiivveess eerrrroorrss iinn tthhee lloogg ffiillee ssuucchh aass ``CCrreeaattiinngg ddeevviiccee xxxxxxxx'' wwhheenn xxxxxx sshhoouulldd bbee aa ffiillee.. You have set your preference `can seek' (under tape drive preferences) to TRUE when your tape drive cannot seek properly. Run the utility `test can seek'. If this utility says that your tape drive cannot seek, change the preference via a command line option, preference file or manually. If the utility says your tape drive can seek, but you are getting these sorts of errors, please contact me with details. 77.. PPrroobblleemmss vveerriiffyyiinngg//rreessttoorriinngg iinnffoo ffiilleess 77..11.. WWhhyy iiss _t_a_p_e_r sslluuggggiisshh wwhheenn sseelleeccttiinngg ffiilleess ttoo rreessttoorree?? When doing a restore, _t_a_p_e_r automatically tries to find the most recent file in the archive - ie. you may have several copies of /home/misc/test in different volumes. _T_a_p_e_r will find the most recent and select that one for restore. This does take time. If you do not want this feature, disable it from the preferences menu and _t_a_p_e_r won't be so sluggish. 77..22.. WWhhyy ddooeess _t_a_p_e_r ttrryy ttoo aaddvvaannccee ttoo aa nnoonn--eexxiisstteenntt vvoolluummee aanndd tthheenn pprriinntt aann eerrrroorr mmeessssaaggee?? When doing a verify or restore info files, _t_a_p_e_r doesn't know how many volumes are on the archive (since that information is in the info files). Thus, the only way _t_a_p_e_r knows that the end of the archive has been reached is when error messages are returned. Some tape drives return error messages gracefully, and hence _t_a_p_e_r exits gracefully. Others do not, and thus _t_a_p_e_r prints error messages. Do not worry about the error messages - you verify/restore etc.. will have worked correctly. 77..33.. IIff II''mm vveerriiffyyiinngg aanndd II rruunn oouutt ooff tteemmppoorraarryy ddiisskk ssppaaccee,, tthheenn _t_a_p_e_r ssaayyss ssoommee ooff mmyy ffiilleess aarreenn''tt tthhee ssaammee aass oonn tthhee ddiisskk wwhheenn II kknnooww tthheeyy aarree If _t_a_p_e_r runs out of disk space while verifying (or restoring), it may not be able to read in the whole file from the tape and thus thinks that the file on the disk and tape are different. If you run out of temporary disk space, ignore all errors and redo the verify. 77..44.. II mmaaddee aa bbaacckkuupp uunnddeerr _f_t_a_p_e vveerrssiioonn >>== 33 aanndd aamm ttrryyiinngg ttoo rreessttoorree uunnddeerr _z_f_t_a_p_e aanndd iitt wwoonn''tt rreessttoorree mmyy ffiilleess.. You cannot restore backups made with _f_t_a_p_e version >= 3 with the older _z_f_t_a_p_e. _z_f_t_a_p_e backups must be restored with _z_f_t_a_p_e and _f_t_a_p_e >= 3 must be restored with _f_t_a_p_e >= 3. 88.. SSppeecciiffiicc ttaappee ddrriivveess 88..11.. TThhee SSeeaaggaattee TTRR44 SSCCSSII ddrriivvee You must prepare a tape as follows before use with _t_a_p_e_r: mt-st -f /dev/st0 setblk 32768 dd if=/dev/zero ibs=32k of=/dev/st0 obs=32k In _t_a_p_e_r, set the set block size preference ON and set the blocksize to 32768. You can use other block sizes other than 32K - make sure you change the appropriate values. Set the preference "use eom" ON. 88..22.. SSoommee SSCCSSII ddrriivveess Some SCSI drives require the scsi2logical parameter set. There are two ways of doing this. +o Change the following line in your _s_t_._c file in the SCSI driver: tpnt->scsi2_logical = 0; to tpnt->scsi2_logical = 1; +o Use the following command before starting _t_a_p_e_r: mt -f /dev/st0 scsi2logical 88..33.. AAddaapptteecc aaiiccxxxxxx From Ringo.DeSmet@advalvas.be: When I started backing up, I had quite some problems, but these were related to the adaptec aic7xxx low-level scsi driver. I am now running kernel 2.0.30 with aic7xxx driver version 2.1.26 (Jun 1). If other people with similar config asks you, I have the following options enabled in the source code of the driver (aic7xxx.c): #define TAGGED_QUEUEING_BY_DEVICE and a few lines beneath it, you can set the SCB queue depth for each device. People must check with the scsiconfig utility which devices support Tagged Queueing. There are 16 values that can be filled in: scsi id 0 to 15. The adapter supports it, as well as my first harddisk. All other devices have tagged queueing disabled. The line in the driver for me looks as follows: { 4, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 8, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1} which means that I tell the scsi driver that my HD (/dev/sda) can accept 4 SCBs and my adapter can accept 8. "-1" means disabled... 99.. MMiisscceellllaanneeoouuss 99..11.. TThhiiss iinnddiiccaatteess tthhaatt yyoouurr ttaappee ddrriivvee rreeqquuiirreess tthhee ssccssii22llooggiiccaall ppaarraammaatteerr sseett.. SSeeee aabboovvee.. II aamm ggeettttiinngg eerrrroorrss ssuucchh aass st0: Error with sense data: extra data not valid Current error st09:00 and sense key Medium Error and Additional sense indicates Id crc or ecc error. 99..22.. II aamm uussiinngg aa SSCCSSII ddrriivvee aanndd _t_a_p_e_r ssaayyss mmyy ddrriivvee ccaannnnoott sseeeekk,, wwhheenn II kknnooww iitt ccaann.. Some SCSI drives require the block size set. If you are having the above problem, try setting the set blocksize preference ON. 99..33.. IInn vveerrssiioonn 66..55,, ttaappeerr iiss nnoott uussiinngg pprreeffeerreenncceess iinn mmyy pprreeffeerreennccee ffiillee From 6.5, the names of the preference file, log files and info directories have been changed. Rename the following files/directories: .taper_log ---> taper_log .taper_prefs ---> taper_prefs .taper_info ---> taper_info 99..44.. IInn vveerrssiioonn 66..55,, ttaappeerr ccaann''tt ffiinndd mmyy iinnffoo ffiilleess See above 99..55.. HHooww ddoo II ccoommpprreessss mmyy iinnffoo ffiilleess wwhhiicchh aarree ccuurrrreennttllyy uunnccoomm-- pprreesssseedd?? Just recreate the info files from the main menu 99..66.. WWhhyy ddooeess llooookkiinngg ffoorr rreeccuurrssiivvee lliinnkkss rreessuulltt iinn aa sseegg ffaauulltt?? The recursive link utility goes through your filesystem looking for links that are recursive (ie. end up pointing to themselves so that there is an infinite loop). This utility tries to find such recursive links. It finds them in one of two ways : +o It finds & tells you about the offending link +o It seg faults at the offending link This way you can find & correct the offending link. Note recursive links are only a problem if you are backing up with hard links set to ON (ie. the file and not the link is backed up). 99..77.. WWhhyy aarree tthhee iinnffoo ffiilleess ssoo bbiigg?? The new info file format from 6.8 is a sparse m-tree index. This is a very fast index file. However, because file names are 256 bytes under Linux, each file takes approximately 300 bytes of information and thus, the info files can grow quite big. However, they do compress very well, so make sure that the compress info preference is ON. Also, if disk space is a problem, you can delete the files ending in `.1' and `.2' and reindex the files (from the utilities menu) when required.