Exabyte Tape's under Linux
Frank Bade
I am realizing a small local network in a primary school in germany.
The school gave me 300,- DM ( they do not have much money ) to realize
a backup services ( to save data on external storage devices ).
I can get an Exabyte tape drive for free. The only thing I have to buy
is a SCSI controller.
Does anyone has experience with exabyte tapes in linux ? If so, can you tell
me your experiences, configuration, hints ?
Thank's a lot
Frank
Kenneth Crudup
Frank Bade <Frank...@ri.dasa.de> says:
>Does anyone has experience with exabyte tapes in linux ? If so, can you tell
>me your experiences, configuration, hints ?
They work flawlessly.
-Kenny
--
Kenneth R. Crudup, Unix Software Consultant, Scott County Consulting
Home1: 8051 Newell St. #914 Silver Spring, MD 20910-0914 (301) 562-1922
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Work: 19420 Homestead Road Cupertino, CA 95014-0606 (408) 447-6654
sup...@sellcom.com
>Hi !
>
>I am realizing a small local network in a primary school in germany.
>The school gave me 300,- DM ( they do not have much money ) to realize
>a backup services ( to save data on external storage devices ).
>
>I can get an Exabyte tape drive for free. The only thing I have to buy
>is a SCSI controller.
>
>Does anyone has experience with exabyte tapes in linux ? If so, can you tell
>me your experiences, configuration, hints ?
I believe that some of the Exabytes used to come with a bottom of the
line Adaptec controller (ours did, but it was a dealer demo 8mm).
Just about any SCSI host that Linux supports should work for you. You
can look at the hardware lists at the famous and fantastic www.redhat.com
website. My guess is that you would have to search hard for a controller
that would not work for you.
Steve
--
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John Thompson
> I am realizing a small local network in a primary school in germany.
> The school gave me 300,- DM ( they do not have much money ) to realize
> a backup services ( to save data on external storage devices ).
>
> I can get an Exabyte tape drive for free. The only thing I have to buy
> is a SCSI controller.
>
> Does anyone has experience with exabyte tapes in linux ? If so, can you tell
> me your experiences, configuration, hints ?
I have an Exabyte 2501 TBU. Works fine in linux. No real
issues; just include the proper support for whatever SCSI
adaptor you use and enable SCSI support.
--
-John (John.T...@attglobal.net)
David Cooley
John Thompson wrote:
>
> Frank Bade wrote:
>
> > I am realizing a small local network in a primary school in germany.
> > The school gave me 300,- DM ( they do not have much money ) to realize
> > a backup services ( to save data on external storage devices ).
> >
> > I can get an Exabyte tape drive for free. The only thing I have to buy
> > is a SCSI controller.
> >
> > Does anyone has experience with exabyte tapes in linux ? If so, can you tell
> > me your experiences, configuration, hints ?
I've got an Exabyte 8505XL running just fine... 14G on a tape with HW
compression!
Jens Klaas
> Hi !
Hi Frank,
>
>
> I am realizing a small local network in a primary school in germany.
> The school gave me 300,- DM ( they do not have much money ) to realize
> a backup services ( to save data on external storage devices ).
>
> I can get an Exabyte tape drive for free. The only thing I have to buy
> is a SCSI controller.
>
> Does anyone has experience with exabyte tapes in linux ? If so, can you tell
> me your experiences, configuration, hints ?
I used an DAT streamer, not an Exabyte on a Linux box without any problems. I
talked
with the Exabyte people some years ago on the C-Bit. They told me that there is
no problem to use an
Exabyte under Linux. The only thing to do is. Enable the scsi tape option in
the kernel.
>
>
> Thank's a lot
> Frank
cu
Jens (NEC Europe Ltd.)
QuestionExchange
>
> I am realizing a small local network in a primary school in
germany.
> The school gave me 300,- DM ( they do not have much money )
to realize
> a backup services ( to save data on external storage devices
).
>
> I can get an Exabyte tape drive for free. The only thing I
have to buy
> is a SCSI controller.
>
> Does anyone has experience with exabyte tapes in linux ? If
so, can you tell
> me your experiences, configuration, hints ?
>
> Frank
>
>
but I am quite familiar with the ARKEIA backup program,
which supports SCSI exabyte tape drives. I have found
ARKEIA to be quite a useful program for managing backups.
I can help you configure it if you decide to use it.
As far as the installation of the physical tape drive goes,
I would try to buy an older, tested SCSI controller that is
known to work well with Linux. I would reccomend compiling
SCSI tape and generic support right into the kernel, since
these modules are sometimes troublesome (especially on
systems with more than 16MB of RAM).
Other than those two things (reliable controller, and
avoiding the st and sg kernel modules). i think you are set.
Good Luck.
--
This answer is courtesy of QuestionExchange.com
http://www.questionexchange.com/showUsenetGuest.jhtml?ans_id=5063&cus_id=USENET&qtn_id=5160
James Myers
I also have an 8505XL, but I have been unable to figure out how to get
HW compression enabled in Linux. In Solaris or HP-UX, I would use the
device file which indicated HW compression, but I don't know what to
do in Linux ... could you descibe how you set this up?
Thanks in advance...
James Myers (jmy...@columbus.rr.nospamplease.com)
David Cooley
James Myers wrote:
>
> David--
>
> I also have an 8505XL, but I have been unable to figure out how to get
> HW compression enabled in Linux. In Solaris or HP-UX, I would use the
> device file which indicated HW compression, but I don't know what to
> do in Linux ... could you descibe how you set this up?
Hi James,
I went to Exabytes web site and looked at the microcode list (firmware
etc) and found the default with hardware compression. I flashed the
drive and the drive does the compression unless you send a SCSI command
to turn it off (WHich you'd have to do manually when it inits or thru
some tool...).
To flash it, you have to be in Winslows though... their prog only runs
under dos/win. Their other flash option is with a special serial cable
to a connector on the drive, but they don't show pinouts or software to
do it with.
Scott Simpson
James Myers wrote:
> David--
>
> I also have an 8505XL, but I have been unable to figure out how to get
> HW compression enabled in Linux. In Solaris or HP-UX, I would use the
> device file which indicated HW compression, but I don't know what to
> do in Linux ... could you descibe how you set this up?
My SDump scripts support software compression if you can't get it to work.
http://home.earthlink.net/~simpson3
Kai Makisara
> David--
>
> I also have an 8505XL, but I have been unable to figure out how to get
> HW compression enabled in Linux. In Solaris or HP-UX, I would use the
> device file which indicated HW compression, but I don't know what to
> do in Linux ... could you descibe how you set this up?
>
The Exabyte uses density codes to control compression. To enable
compression, use the command 'mt setdensity 0x8c', to disable
compression use 'mt setdensity 0x15'.
You can also set up different devices for compressed and uncompressed
writing. See the st man page, mt man page and stinit man page.
All this assuming your mt is from mt-st 0.4 or 0.5b.
Kai
James Myers
Per David, I checked the website and grabbed new EEPROM and firmware
images. Turns out the default EEPROM I was using sets hw compression
by default, but I grabbed one that also turns on "SCSI enhancements"
just for kicks. I was having occasional system freezes before
(definitely hardware related), maybe the new firmware will help... or
maybe my ancient ISA adaptec SCSI card is at fault.
The readme in Scott's download script package showed me how to check
my mt version - 0.5b (stock RedHat 6). I'll have to play with those
scripts later.
I went to the Exabyte site to try and find SCSI sense code info to
confirm the codes Kai mentioned. I found the codes on page 10-18 (pdf
page 174) of the relevant SCSI refernce pdf
(http://www.exabyte.com/suppserv/pubs/drive-pubs.html#8505). Also got
confirmation there about what David said. When I run the mt command to
get status, I get this output...
root@maison-ikkoku [/dev]
# mt -f /dev/st0 status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 1024 bytes. Density code 0x0 (default).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN
According to the pdf page, that density code 0x0 (00h) defaults to the
EEPROM setting, which I had (and have) set to compressed, so I was
compressed all along. Guess I don't need a special device file then.
Neat. I should read those man pages anyway tho...
Thanks again
James
Andreas Wohlfeld
>I am realizing a small local network in a primary school in germany.
>The school gave me 300,- DM ( they do not have much money ) to realize
>a backup services ( to save data on external storage devices ).
>
>I can get an Exabyte tape drive for free. The only thing I have to buy
>is a SCSI controller.
>
If you buy a scsi controller, do youself a favour and buy a symbios 8100 for
55DM. It's busmaster PCI and more than sufficient for a streamer. I'm using
an external 8200 without probelms for a couple of years now with one of my
8100s.
Scott Marlowe
> On Sun, 17 Oct 1999 08:49:32 -0600, Scott Marlowe
> <smar...@uswest.net> wrote:
>
> >You can tell if you are using compression during a backup because the
> >middle light will flash yellow when compressed, green when uncompressed.
>
> So it does - the tape drive manual has a misprint there.
>
> Watching the yellow light now. Looks good.
What's your average data rate? I'm getting about 0.5 Megs a second. Seems
pretty slow to me after using a DDS-3 drive that regularly did 100+Megs a
minute. Sweet drives those.
David Cooley
Scott Marlowe wrote:
>
> What's your average data rate? I'm getting about 0.5 Megs a second. Seems
> pretty slow to me after using a DDS-3 drive that regularly did 100+Megs a
> minute. Sweet drives those.
Mine just did 28M/sec on a full backup of my Linux drive... This with
an Adaptec 2940UW
James Myers
>What's your average data rate? I'm getting about 0.5 Megs a second. Seems
>pretty slow to me after using a DDS-3 drive that regularly did 100+Megs a
>minute. Sweet drives those.
Not sure... I'll have to check that & post later.
We have DLT7000s at work... talk about screamers... too bad they cost
$5-10K!
James
Scott Marlowe
> Scott Marlowe wrote:
> >
> > What's your average data rate? I'm getting about 0.5 Megs a second. Seems
> > pretty slow to me after using a DDS-3 drive that regularly did 100+Megs a
> > minute. Sweet drives those.
>
> Mine just did 28M/sec on a full backup of my Linux drive... This with
> an Adaptec 2940UW
Ummm. According to spec, it has a max speed of 1 Megabyte per second
sustained. You mean 28 Megs / minute?
James Myers
>> > What's your average data rate? I'm getting about 0.5 Megs a second. Seems
>> > pretty slow to me after using a DDS-3 drive that regularly did 100+Megs a
>> > minute. Sweet drives those.
I usually get 25-30 Mb/min.
James
David Cooley
Scott Marlowe wrote:
>
> Ummm. According to spec, it has a max speed of 1 Megabyte per second
> sustained. You mean 28 Megs / minute?
Oops.. Yep!
David Cooley
James Myers wrote:
>
> >What's your average data rate? I'm getting about 0.5 Megs a second. Seems
> >pretty slow to me after using a DDS-3 drive that regularly did 100+Megs a
> >minute. Sweet drives those.
>
> Not sure... I'll have to check that & post later.
>
> We have DLT7000s at work... talk about screamers... too bad they cost
> $5-10K!
the 7000's are slow compared to the new 9840's. 9840's have 8meg cache
on each drive, HW compression good for 2:1.
Gregory Ade
Hash: SHA1
I am using a pair of Exabyte 8500 8mm drives that I got for free when we
scrapped an old server at work. They can do 2.5GB uncompressed on a 120m
tape, and work with any SCSI-2 host. I've had them connected through an
Adaptec 1540, and they are currently running on a Buslogic/Mylex BT-958.
If you compile the SCSI Tape devices either into the kernel or as kernel
modules, you should have no problem at all accessing Exabytes.
On 11 Oct 1999, Frank Bade wrote:
> Hi !
>
> I am realizing a small local network in a primary school in germany.
> The school gave me 300,- DM ( they do not have much money ) to realize
> a backup services ( to save data on external storage devices ).
>
> I can get an Exabyte tape drive for free. The only thing I have to buy
> is a SCSI controller.
>
> Does anyone has experience with exabyte tapes in linux ? If so, can you tell
> me your experiences, configuration, hints ?
>
> Thank's a lot
> Frank
>
>
- --
Gregory Ade <gk...@bigbrother.net>
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