Hi all,

I am using amanda with IOmega disks and a home grown tape changer that I 
announced earlier in this forum. As there is no robot for this kind of backup 
media, a warm body is needed to get the IOmega disk into the slot. So the 
tape changer tells amanda, that it is searchable. It is doing the seach by 
opening a TTY and asks the user to insert the correct tape (well, IOmega 
disk) and waits for a keyboard hit signalling that the tape has been loaded.

This works fine for amdump, but fails for amrecover. I got beyond the point 
that amrecover uses the tape changer. By inspecting various log files in 
/tmp/amanda I found out that the tape changer indeed is called to search for 
a specific tape, but bails out saying "Cannot open TTY".

Am I right in my perception that this is a feature rather than a bug, because 
amrecover contacts the tape server via socket connection and the tape server 
(possibly even residing on a different host) does not have a TTY ?

If my perception is right, is there any other way for the tape changer to 
communicate with the person that called amrecover (perhaps using the socket 
connection) ?

If there is indeed no such way, is it safe to assume that either the tape 
changer can open a TTY (and contact the user) or it can assume that the front 
end has already asked the user to insert the correct tape ? In the latter 
case I would change the tape changer code not to exit if it can't open a TTY, 
but continue assuming that the correct tape (aka IOmega disk) already is in 
the slot.

-- 

Mit freundlichen Gruessen/Best Regards

Dr. Christoph Pospiech
High Performance & Parallel Computing
Advanced Computing Technology Center
Phone +49-621-469450, Fax: ...-469200, eMail: pospiech AT de.ibm DOT com
Mobile +49-171 765 5871
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