NeilCarter - 2011-08-11

Greetings:

I've got about a dozen linux servers to backup to a new Sun SL-24 Auto Loader (LTO4).  In total, my script is supposed to backup roughly 25 servers (Solaris, Linux, w2k3) and it does these one at a time to the autoloader.  So each backup starts writing on tape to wherever the previous one finished.  There are only two rewinds in the entire script, one at the beginning and one at the end (well, a rewoffl).

On our Solaris servers we use the ufsdump command (Solaris' version of dump) which has a couple of additional options to specifically handle autoload delays at EOT (specifically 'l' and 'T').

In the man page for dump, there are references to autoloaders and EOT's, but nothing is really discussed regarding the pauses required or how it handles them.

Does this capability exist in dump, or are the timeouts large enough that I don't need to worry about it?

I can't have this script asking for a change of tapes!

Please advise.

Thanks!