Hello, and thank you all for your suggestions.
Just to make sure my hardware is still working I installed gtar and dumped about 10tb to tape, and it completed without errors.
Perhaps I should have included this information in the first email, but I’ve tried several combinations of parameters in the bacula-sd.conf, and it failed each time. Here are the parts I’ve changed:
First try: Offline On Unmount = no Hardware End of Medium = no BSF at EOM = yes Backward Space Record = no Fast Forward Space File = no TWO EOF = yes
Second Try: Device { Name = QuantumLTO Media Type = LTO6 Device Type = Tape ArchiveDevice = /dev/nsa0 LabelMedia = yes # Random Access = yes Requires Mount = no AutomaticMount = yes RemovableMedia = yes Always Open = yes Offline On Unmount = no Hardware End of Medium = yes BSF at EOM = yes Backward Space Record = yes Fast Forward Space File = yes TWO EOF = yes
Third Try: Device { Name = QuantumLTO Media Type = LTO6 Device Type = Tape ArchiveDevice = /dev/nsa0 Description = "LTO-6 for FreeBSD" LabelMedia = yes AutomaticMount = yes; # when device opened, read it AlwaysOpen = yes RemovableMedia = yes Offline On Unmount = no Hardware End of Medium = no BSF at EOM = yes Backward Space Record = no Fast Forward Space File = no TWO EOF = yes
Fourth Try: Device { Name = QuantumLTO Media Type = LTO6 Device Type = Tape ArchiveDevice = /dev/nsa0 Description = "LTO-6 for FreeBSD" LabelMedia = yes AutomaticMount = yes; # when device opened, read it AlwaysOpen = yes RemovableMedia = yes Offline On Unmount = no Hardware End of Medium = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific BSF at EOM = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific Backward Space Record = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific Fast Forward Space File = yes # Noted as FreeBSD specific TWO EOF = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific
And today, as I type this I’m trying a btape fill test with: Device { Name = QuantumLTO Media Type = LTO6 Device Type = Tape ArchiveDevice = /dev/nsa0 Description = "LTO-6 for FreeBSD" LabelMedia = yes AutomaticMount = yes; # when device opened, read it AlwaysOpen = yes RemovableMedia = yes Offline On Unmount = no Hardware End of Medium = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific BSF at EOM = yes # Support List Recommendation Backward Space Record = yes # Support List Recommendation Fast Forward Space File = yes # Noted as FreeBSD specific TWO EOF = yes # Support List Recommendation Minimum Block Size = 64512 Maximum Block Size = 64512
Which is similar to my third try, with the exceptions of Backward Space Record, Fast Forward Space File, and also the addition of the Min and Max Block Size directives.
So at this point my question is this: is there a smart way to identify the correct entries for my hardware? I’ve re-read the docs from quantum but clearly I’m still flailing. The trial-and-error approach wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t take 11 hours to write 2.5tb, then a short while to begin the second tape, then begin the unfill portion of the test, then eventually fail. It’s basically a full calendar day with each config file guess iteration.
As an aside, gtar wrote to tape at almost exactly twice the speed that I’m seeing in the btape test. My disk arrays are showing 300+mb/s for random reads, so they’re not the bottleneck. Almost immediately after I get this multi-tape dump and restore working in bacula I’ll be needing to address the horrible speeds I’m seeing. I do notice a lot of “shoe shining” while running btape fill, and nothing is being written to the spool directory (which is ssd) so maybe the real backups will be faster. We’ll see.
Thanks again, Simon
On Tue, 1 Mar 2016 14:07:55 +0100, Cejka Rudolf said:
Simon Templar wrote (2016/02/29):
I've set up bacula 7.2 on my FreeBSD server using Postgres as the
backend database.
Which FreeBSD version? According to the mt status it seems to be
sufficiently fresh.
Device {
...
Hardware End of Medium = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific
BSF at EOM = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific
Backward Space Record = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific
Fast Forward Space File = yes # Noted as FreeBSD specific
TWO EOF = no # Noted as FreeBSD specific
Where did you get this?
Try this:
BSF at EOM = yes
TWO EOF = yes
Hardware End of Medium = no # maybe not needed now, but there is no
# performance impact, so let's start with it
Backward Space Record = yes # not needed, changed to yes is the default
Fast Forward Space File = yes # not needed, yes is the default
There is no "correct" value for all hardware. I needed TWO EOF = yes etc for DDS drive on FreeBSD 4, but for an HP LTO-1 drive on FreeBSD 8 I needed this: Hardware End of Medium = no BSF at EOM = no Backward Space Record = yes Backward Space File = yes Fast Forward Space File = yes TWO EOF = no __Martin
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