Re: [Dump-users] Problems spanning tapes with dump

[Eric J. <eje...@sw...>]

Hi,
   Dump is indeed expecting to have a tty to talk to.  A couple of
things you might try, neither of which I've attempted:

1.  Run "expect", and use it to talk to dump.  I've never used it, but
    my understanding is that it's made for exactly this sort of thing. 

2.  Try using this facility, described in the dump man page:

     -F script
         Run script at the end of each tape. The device name and the cur­
         rent volume number are passed on the command line.  The script
         must return 0 if dump should continue without asking the user to
         change the tape, 1 if dump should continue but ask the user
         to change the tape.  Any other exit code will cause dump to
         abort.  For security reasons, dump reverts back to the real user
         ID and the real group ID before running the script.

Seems like you could have a simple script that would just wait however
long it will take your changer to change the tape (plus some safety
margin), and then return 0, so that dump would continue.  So this could
just be

#!/bin/sh

sleep 5m
exit 0

and you should be set.  You probably don't even need the exit line,
since sleep ought to return zero if it executes successfully (I think).


I've never tried this, but it looks like what you need.  Let us know if
it works.

Thanks,

Eric