On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 09:58:34AM -0500, Eric Sproul (esproul AT ntelos DOT 
net) wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 00:10, Jobst Schmalenbach wrote:
> > all,
> > 
> > When you want to extract tapes from a tape WITHOUT using amanda
> > how do you know which file a particular archive is located?
> > 
> > Wouldnt it be a good idea to have a "table of content" located
> > in the second BLOCk?
> 
> Jobst,
> My approach to this is to run amtoc after each backup run and copy the
> resulting TOC file to at least one other machine, if not more.  This
> ensures that even if I completely lose my indexes and logs, I will still
> know what is on each tape and where.  Knowing the tape file number of
> the DLE I want to recover enables me to precisely position the tape with
> mt, then dd the file off the tape and begin the restore.

Its not a bad idea to store the indeces somewhere else, I think I
will just do that (ie store them on the clients I am backing up).


> 
> Check out the manpage on amtoc-- it's pretty simple to use.  I made a
> small shell script that runs from the AMANDA user's cron.  This script
> runs amdump, then amtoc, then scp's the amtoc file to a remote server.

I know about that program, thanks.

I try next week to write a little shell script which takes the
*first* 32 block, dumps it to a file, reads is, and starts writing on the first
zero, appends the TOC (as in tar location/filemarks/date) making sure not
writing past the 32K and dumps it back to to the tape.
I think using a "mt -f /dev/tape rewind" or "mt -f /dev/tape asf 0"
should me put me onto the beginning of the header block.
Then I will check whether AMANDA still recognises this tape as an
AMANDA tape ...

IFF it does that, I will post the script.

To compare what I can handle with 30K I just looked at my php.ini file, 
its 25K, making it ~11 pages on a 50 row XTERM, that SHOULD do the trick
to write just the filemarks, archive directories and date.


> 
> For extra redundancy, you can also print the latest run's TOC to
> hardcopy (like Paul says he does using amreport and a Postscript
> template).
> 
> I try not to mess with the tape after AMANDA gets hold of it.  She knows
> best.  ;)
> 
> Cheers,
> Eric

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