YATES@C.CHEM.UPENN.EDU ("Yates, John H.") (09/11/90)
Argh!! I ordered 10 Sony 8mm tapes from INMAC, $13 apiece. Catalog
misprint I was told, $33 is the real price. They honored the lower
price for the 10, but had only 5 in stock, backordered the second 5.
Ok, I told them, but I won't buy any more 8mm from INMAC. Ok, they said.
The first 5 to come in were: Sony 8mm data cartridge QG-112M.
The next 5 to come in were: Sony Video 8 P6-120MP (metal particle tape).
When doing backups, I tend to get roughly 295 recoverable errors on some
of the tapes of each variety, upon which the system then assumes the end of
volume (just gives up?), and asks for another tape. Argh! Not good for an
overnight script. The data DOES all fit on one GOOD tape.
Questions:
Are the two varieties above of high enough quality?
What is the best tape to use?
Should I suspect a hardware problem?
Should I suspect dirty heads? (this drive is almost brand new!)
(and how should they be cleaned? I know VCR fanatics on both
sides of using head cleaner tapes).
Thanks, John
yates@c.chem.upenn.edu
P.S. If anyone is interested, here is the gist of the bru backup file that I
I eventually decided upon. (at least this all made sense once I gave up
on the Backup script). It avoids /tmp, and /scr (a whole 1.2 GB disk on
our machine), and crossing mounted file system boundaries, i.e. gets all
the necessary and none of the unnecessary data.
bru8mm :
#
echo "Starting bru 8mm Backup"
date
df
ps -el
#
mt -t /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr retension
mt -t /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr rewind
#
echo "bru Backup /"
bru -cvmRf /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr /
#
echo "bru Backup /usr"
bru -cvmRf /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr /usr
#
echo "bru Backup /u0"
bru -cvmRf /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr /u0
#
echo "bru Backup /u1"
bru -cvmRf /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr /u1
#
# (etc. through /u7)
#
echo "Rewind tape."
mt -t /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr rewind
#
echo "List 1st bru backup set (/)"
bru -tvf /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr
#
echo "List 2nd bru backup set (/usr)"
bru -tvf /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr
#
echo "List 3rd bru backup set (/u0)"
bru -tvf /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr
#
echo "List 4th bru backup set (/u1)"
bru -tvf /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr
#
# (etc. through /u7)
#
mt -t /dev/rmt/tps0d6nr rewind
#
df
ps -el
date
echo "Done."olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson) (09/11/90)
In <9009101958.AA29127@remote.dccs.upenn.edu> YATES@C.CHEM.UPENN.EDU ("Yates, John H.") writes: | Argh!! I ordered 10 Sony 8mm tapes from INMAC, $13 apiece. Catalog | misprint I was told, $33 is the real price. They honored the lower | price for the 10, but had only 5 in stock, backordered the second 5. | Ok, I told them, but I won't buy any more 8mm from INMAC. Ok, they said. | | The first 5 to come in were: Sony 8mm data cartridge QG-112M. | The next 5 to come in were: Sony Video 8 P6-120MP (metal particle tape). | | When doing backups, I tend to get roughly 295 recoverable errors on some | of the tapes of each variety, upon which the system then assumes the end of | volume (just gives up?), and asks for another tape. Argh! Not good for an | overnight script. The data DOES all fit on one GOOD tape. | | Questions: | Are the two varieties above of high enough quality? | What is the best tape to use? | Should I suspect a hardware problem? | Should I suspect dirty heads? (this drive is almost brand new!) | (and how should they be cleaned? I know VCR fanatics on both | sides of using head cleaner tapes). | Our Exabyte rep has STRONGLY recommended that you do NOT use MP (metal particle) tape on the Exabyte drives. You will get far more errors than you should. The Q6-112M sounds like it is the same tape that Exabyte sells (I'm not positive), EXCEPT that the official ones sold by both Exabyte and Sony are Data grade. This means that they have been cerified as reasonably error free, and are otherwise pretty much the same as the commercial grade. If you choose not to use Data grade tapes, you are on your own. They may (and in fact do) work fine most of the time, but you can't count on it. When bru (or other tape programs) give up and ask for a new tape, it is usually because they have encountered an unrecoverable error. There should be a message to this effect on your console and/or in SYSLOG. -- Dave Olson Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.