On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 11:53:49AM -0400, Joel wrote:
> I've inherited a problem and want to attack this in phases. We are
> running version 2.4.1p1 and before I upgrade I've got a boat load of
> other things to do. Our DLT4000 died and we replaced it with a Quantum 
> DLT1. I'm not sure what the tapetype entry in my config file should look 
> like. It seems to run ok if I use the old one but I want to verify that
> I'm not creating write-only backups. This is what we have now
> 
>     define tapetype DLT-HWC {
>         comment "DLT tape drive, Hardware Compression"
>         length 40000 mbytes     # 20 Gig tapes, 2x compression
>         filemark 2000 kbytes    # I don't know what this means
>         speed 3000 kbytes       # Should be about twice as fast as DLT
>         lbl-templ "/etc/amanda/Daily/8.5x11.ps"
>     }

Tape parameters are used mostly in planning.  Once the dump is done
and taped, I don't recall anything using the tapetype info.

As to the parameters, speed is there for info only, nothing uses it.
Length, set to what you think is correct for your longer tape.
Filemark is the space (with no user data) left by the drive/tape format
between tape files.  There will be 1 filemark on the tape for each
DLE (plus 1 :).  Amanda reduces the tape length in its calculations
based on this.  Unless you have a scazillion DLE's, the filemark
will have little effect.

When you upgrade, run tapetype and get the correct values.

Oh wait, you can't because you are using HW compression.
You will have to fudge it anyway.  See many past discussions.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)