Just make a backup of a few large files, recover them into a temporary
directory, and compare the recoverds with the originals using cmp -l.

Michael Martinez
System Administrator
Information Systems and Technology Management
CSREES - United States Department of Agriculture
(202) 720-6223


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dietmar Goldbeck [mailto:dietmar.goldbeck AT acm DOT org]
> Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2002 10:20 AM
> To: Brian Jonnes
> Cc: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
> Subject: Re: Testing tapes
> 
> 
> 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.
>