On Wednesday 13 November 2002 08:42, Jonathan Swaby wrote:
>I have read the recent thread about crash recovery, and I have
> tried some of the things mentioned in the notes. I am using
> amanda 2.4.3b3 on a Linux box to backup Win2k shares to HD. The
> backup process works just fine, and I have not had a need to
> restore anything yet, but I figured I should give that process a
> try. I have tried amrecover recently and in the past without
> success. I have tried the commands included in the output report,
> dd if=<tape> bs=32k skip=1. <tape> in my case is a file on the
> hd. This generates a file that is not a zip file or a tar file. I
> have also tried this without the skip=1 option. amrestore
> <filename> has produced a file that I can recover from. In my
> setup, is there a down side to using amrestore, then using tar?
> Any ideas on why using dd is not working for me?
>
>Thanks Jonathan Swaby
Thats one of the things I just ran into here. I wound up doing it 
this way: position the tape at BOT, then

dd if=/dev/nst0 count=1

which will get you the tape header output to screen identifying the 
tape.

repeat a couple more times till you see the header of the first file 
on the tape.  Note where this file is from, like "/usr/local". 
Also note what it says after "comp", if 'N" leave out the z below.

cd to that location (I was recovering from a fdisked drive) and do

dd if=/dev/nst0 bs=32k | tar -xzvf -

You may want to use a scratch directory and only copy back what you 
need, I needed it all.

When that run is done, then a 

dd if=/dev/nst0 count=1

will get you the next files header.  I know it tells you to use a 
"skip=1" option, but the header read itself is the skip=1, so leave 
it out as the tape is properly positioned to read the rest of the 
tar file after the header read.

You are at the end of the tape when the header read contains the 
TAPEEND and date completed.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.19% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly