stern@imagen.UUCP (Martin Stern) (03/07/89)
Reply-to: stern@imagen.UUCP (Martin Stern) Hi Everyone, I have a question concerning tape duplication of an Ultrix installation tape. I want to back up my Ultrix distribution tape (it turns out that it wasn't bad at all !!) just in case of disaster so i tried the following command %dd if=/dev/nrmt9 bs=5120 of=ddfile and received tape error, eof marker 0+60 records in 0+60 records out no matter what value I chose for the blocksize, I always got a tape error or hard error (I didn't write the error down, so I may have presented here incorrectly...). My question is: How do I make a backup copy of this tape ? Thanks in advance, (8-) Marty please send replies to stern@imagen...or mail to QMS/IMAGEN 2650 San Tomas Expressway Santa Clara, Calif. 95051-0953 (408) 986 - 9400 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****************************** generic disclaimer ***************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) (03/22/89)
Reply-to: avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) Check the setld documentation with ULTRIX V3.0. The setld tape is made up of a bunch of different files, the first few having different blocksizes than the rest. Fred
tp@decwrl.UUCP (t patterson) (03/22/89)
Reply-to: tp@decwrl.UUCP (t patterson) In article <85740@felix.UUCP> stern@imagen.UUCP (Martin Stern) writes: >Hi Everyone, > I have a question concerning tape duplication of an Ultrix >installation tape. I want to back up my Ultrix distribution tape >(it turns out that it wasn't bad at all !!) just in case of disaster >so i tried the following command > > %dd if=/dev/nrmt9 bs=5120 of=ddfile > >and received [errors] >My question is: How do I make a backup copy of this tape ? as this may be of general interest, am posting this reply also. Ultrix 3.0 actually has documentation which helps describe the format of its installation tape ("Guide to Preparing for Software Distribution on Ultrix Systems"). however, the /etc/setld script is _still_ the easiest way to figure this out (plus entertaining and educational). (I figured out all of the following at Intel using "dd" and reading "/etc/setld"; insert standard disclaimers here.) your main problem is that the tape consists of multiple files. so, some succession of dd commands (or something) is needed to read it. what I usually do is: dd if=/dev/nrmt0h of=file.0 bs=512 for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... [lots of numbers here] do dd if=/dev/nrmt0h of=file.$i bs=10k done there is also an ordering to the files on the tape: file 0: used to be boot block, 512 bytes; seems like they usually give out a separate standalone tape nowadays, so this is probably obsolete (it had nothing interesting on it when I looked at the Ultrix 3.0 tape). file 1: my memory may be fooling me, but I think this used to be the standalone kernel; again, a space was left here on the 3.0 tape file 2: mini-root filesystem in dump format file 3: all the control files for the rest of the distribution in one big tar file file 4: all the rest are compressed tar files (think they first . started compressing them in 3.0); you can figure out how . many there are by reading file 3, but I'm usually lazy and file n: just keep dd'ing until there's nothing left to read. anyway, the first two files don't seem real important anymore, so you could probably get away with a big loop which just dd'd files off the tape until it bombed. you can also use the /etc/ris program to get stuff off the tape. (using ris is a decent idea if you want to keep the tape contents on-line and do installs to other systems over your network.) and, of course, after you've dd'd the data to disk, you can dd it back to a tape at your leisure ... or dd from tape to tape if you can. once you know the tape is arranged you can handle it any way you want. -- t. patterson domain: tp@decwrl.dec.com path: decwrl!tp icbm: 122 9 41 W / 37 26 35 N % opinions herein are mine alone and certainly not those of DEC