[comp.sys.mac.hardware] Exabyte and MacDump

news@pdn.paradyne.com (News Subsystem) (01/03/91)

In article <081735.862@timbuk.cray.com> rjt@sedist.cray.com (Randy Thomas) writes:
About Exabyte tape drives:
>
>	It has a SCSI interface, so I suppose you could attach it to your mac; 
>it mostly behaves like a HUGE streamer drive. I haven't asked, they (or one of 
>the remarketers) may already have mac software for them. 
We have asked Exabyte if they have any drivers for the Macs. Alas, no
they dont consider it a big enough market to get into?? I have not heard
of any re-marketers having software for it either.
>It is an EXTREMELY 
>popular backup mechanism for workstation networks - Here at Cray we have them 
>scattered all over our international network, backing up the various Sun 
>servers we have floating around (I have one on my desk attached to a Sun 3/50 
>that backs up the 3/160 downstairs...).
We have several here on our Sun network also. I can get from the Mac to
the Sun via Tops or FTP through a Fastpath.
>
>	We have a bunch of macs here, and we run macdump to back up their hard 
>disks to the Sun. Every night I pop the backups to the Exabyte drive when the 
>Sun gets backed up...
I got macdump from the archives, but it needs something called the CAP
libraries. Do you know where to get these? Will the Fastpath be good
enough to do the dumping or do I need a direct Ethernet connection? What
is your set up? I would like to get this working here.
From: efwjr@triton.paradyne.com (Ellsworth Warmouth (813)530-2882)
Path: triton!efwjr

Some other questions:

Have you ever had a disk fail? Can you do a full restore after replacing
the hard-drive or do you have to have most of the system software in
place?
Do you do incremental backups or a full image every night?
Any other suggestions for getting macdump working smoothly?

Thanks

>-----
>Randy Thomas				Voice: (404) 631-2246
>Americas Field Technical Support	Pager: 800-SKY-PAGE id #27606
>Cray Research, Inc.			FAX: (404) 631-0911
>200 Westpark Dr., Suite 160		Internet: rjt@sedist.cray.com
>Peachtree City, Ga. 30269		UUCP: uunet!cray!sedist!rjt


Ellsworth Warmouth  AT&T Paradyne Corp. Largo FL  813-530-2882
UUCP 	efwjr@pdn.paradyne.com	Amateur Call	KB4SH 
Opinions expressed are mine alone and not necessarily those of AT&T Paradyne.

rjt@sedist.cray.com (Randy Thomas) (01/03/91)

	CAP is the Columbia AppleTalk Protocols; a set of libraries that
allows most *nix boxes to speak AppleTalk. Look on cunix.cc.columbia.edu;
there is also a rutgers version that fixes some bugs. Look on
rutgers.rutgers.edu for ru-cap.tar.Z. There is a lot of black magic
(and other colors, too :-) in getting it to work; don't ask me what I did,
I'm sworn to secrecy - well, okay, I'm not sure why what I did worked. Seems
to be a common occurrence in Tech Support :-)

	Yes, I've dropped (well, the user did) a disk. Made a mess on the
floor. I replaced the drive with a spare, went to another mac, daisy-chained
the disks together, and ran the restore program to suck the disk back
down from the Sun. The user was happy, I was happy, the local KFPS-4
breathed a sigh of relief when the traffic stopped.

	I do full dumps once a week, incrementals nightly. The entire
Sun filesystem where the Mac dumps are stored gets a full backup weekly,
incrementals nightly; it's all timed so the Macs dump and then the Sun dumps.

	I had to bash on the Unix sources for macdump and macdumpmgr to
get them to put things where I wanted, and log the messages I wanted logged.
Mostly tinkering; the guts of the backup code were left unchanged.
-----
Randy Thomas				Voice: (404) 631-2246
Americas Field Technical Support	Pager: 800-SKY-PAGE id #27606
Cray Research, Inc.			FAX: (404) 631-0911
200 Westpark Dr., Suite 160		Internet: rjt@sedist.cray.com
Peachtree City, Ga. 30269		UUCP: uunet!cray!sedist!rjt

tj@kona.cs.ucla.edu (Tom Johnson) (01/04/91)

In article <1991Jan3.072809.8406@pdn.paradyne.com> news@pdn.paradyne.com (News Subsystem) writes:
>In article <081735.862@timbuk.cray.com> rjt@sedist.cray.com (Randy Thomas) writes:
>We have asked Exabyte if they have any drivers for the Macs. Alas, no
>they dont consider it a big enough market to get into?? I have not heard
>of any re-marketers having software for it either.

Retrospect works just fine with Exabyte tape drives.

Tom

-- 
Tom Johnson      UCLA Computer Science Department 
			3413 Boelter Hall, Los Angeles CA 90024 (213)825-2145
			Internet:  tj@cs.ucla.edu

carl@doctor.Tymnet.COM (Carl Baltrunas) (01/23/91)

In article <1991Jan3.233554.24170@cs.ucla.edu> tj@kona.cs.ucla.edu (Tom Johnson) writes:
>In article <1991Jan3.072809.8406@pdn.paradyne.com> news@pdn.paradyne.com (News Subsystem) writes:
>>In article <081735.862@timbuk.cray.com> rjt@sedist.cray.com (Randy Thomas) writes:
>>We have asked Exabyte if they have any drivers for the Macs. Alas, no
>>they dont consider it a big enough market to get into?? I have not heard
>>of any re-marketers having software for it either.
>
>Retrospect works just fine with Exabyte tape drives.
>
>Tom
>
Um... I just hooked a Sun boot box with a approx 600MB WREN-VI and a 60MB
archive tape and tried running Fastback II and it was able to see and use
the tape drive.  I didn't get any "extra" driver.

Since the Exabyte is seen on the SCSI bus as a tape device, I'd expect this
to work as well.  (When I get a chance, I'll try it and let you know.  We
just put an Exabyte on a Sun SLC workstation, and it`s protable so I can
just hook it up and try it out.)

-Carl

PS.  Does anyone know what is a good tape-reading/writing program for the
     Mac?  I'd like to maybe write TAR format tapes and read/write them on
     the same portable tape drive... thus I can backup my Mac, and also move
     very LARGE amounts of data between my Sun/Unix system and my Mac.


-- 
Carl A Baltrunas 408/922-6206|SMTP:carl@doctor.TYMNET.COM,carl@tymix.tymnet.com
BT Tymnet (Network Services) |UUCP: ...!{ames,pyramid}!oliveb!tymix!doctor!carl
PO Box 49019, MS/C41         |PDP-10 support: 36-bits forever! well, awhile!
San Jose, CA 95161-9019      |(insert cute Macintosh quote here)