On Thu, 2003-01-30 at 16:52, lone_wolf_20 AT yahoo DOT com wrote:
> 2) Has anyone used the SDLT 320 drives w/ Amanda?  I
> searched the group archives and didn't get much from
> them on these drives, same with the FAQ (tape-info
> would be nice for these drives).

I recently deployed an HP changer with SDLT320 drives.  Like you, I
couldn't find any canned tapetypes or other information.  I scaled up an
existing SDLT220 tapetype, and so far that has worked fine, but I'm
nowhere near filling up a tape, so I'm not confident I got it right. ;)

define tapetype COMPAQ-SDLT320 {
    comment "StorageWorks MSL5026S2 library"
    length 163010 mbytes        # educated guess
    filemark 736 kbytes         # ditto
    speed 15360 kbytes          # this isn't really used
}

I also shamelessly ripped off an idea that someone posted here with
regard to ensuring HW compression is turned off.  Since you are also
planning to run Linux, this should work for you.

in /etc/modules.conf:

post-install st mt datcompression off

This instructs the kernel to run the command 'mt datcompression off'
after loading the st driver.  That should ensure that HW compression is
turned off even after resetting the drive and/or rebooting the host.

As for your question 3), I like to use software compression since I have
fairly fast clients, and it helps AMANDA make better estimates of how
much tape will be used.

Cheers,
Eric