On Sat, Aug 31, 2002 at 01:45:44PM +0200, Brian Jonnes wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think I have a faulty tape or two. What is the best recommended way of 
> testing this? Generate a file from /dev/urandom, write it to the tape and 
> md5sum it?
> 

If you use software compression with Amanda, one easy way
would be 

amrecover -c /dev/tape 
gzip -tv *.?

This checks the internal gzip CRC on all files.  

You could also run Amanda without tape, compute the md5sum of all
files on the holding disk, flush them and then recover and compare
md5. 

I personally would not just write one large file, because
the tape might have some special problem ocurring with Amanda
(writing lots of file marks, writing 32k blocks etc.)

I always used Amanda itself and checked _all_ gzip CRC. 

When testing a new Amanda server/new tape drive 
i also do some real restores on to some spare disk and compare m5sums
of the original tree and the restored tree.

> Also, what is the expected lifetime for Travan 4 tapes (each used once a 
> week)? When should I retire them?

I don't have experience with travan. My experience with several DDS
and DLT tape drives (and hundreds of tapes) suggests that problems
with more than _only_ _one_ tape are probably problems of the drive
:-((

-- 
 Alles Gute / best wishes  
     Dietmar Goldbeck                E-Mail: dietmar.goldbeck AT acm DOT org
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
Civilization?  Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.