Compress files with output to tape

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hi,

I have problem backup my files,

1 of my HD hit 46 % I want to backup 24 files into DDS3 tape (2 of them are more than 2GB)

Can I compress my files with output to DDS3 tape without "tar" to HD first.

Thank you
Sinardy

2

what os are you running. diffearnt os's have differant backup commands that support diffearnt options.

with the tar command you can have it written directly to tape. there are many examples in the man page.

#man tar

3

I forget to tell you that, I am tuning my backup script, our previous script took 8 hours to backup 24 files (total is about 10 GB), the script is something like...

tar cv file1 > log.log
tar uv file2 >> log.log
tar uf file3 >> log.log
tar uf file4 >> log.log
..
..

Note: file1 (1.998 GB), file2 (580 MB)

And one of our partition that need to backup is 45% so that I try not to use our HD as our compressed file buffer before backup to tape.

Thank you,
Sinardy

4

Most DDS-3 tape drives have built-in compression. The data is compressed on the fly as data is written. To use this feature in most unix versions, you just need to use the right special file. Check the documentation for your tape driver.

5

What I know is tape is using special DDS3 block tape size so all your file will not compress...

6

Hi,

I think you have some possibilites, depending on your OS

  1. GNU tar has options for compressing: -z for gzip and -C (I not remember - see man) for compress.

  2. You can use pipes with compress command , gzip supports it.

  3. Activate compressing on DDS3 - usually it uses tape (SCO) or mt commands for that.

and so on.

Sincerely,
nailk

7

I think you shoul make a total .tar file as you are doing, then use the gzip GNU tool it is a free binary and finally use the cpio command to send your file to the tape :

$ gzip yourfile.tar
$ ls *.gz | cpio -oc > /dev/rmt/n

this should work properly
:cool: