Is there a command on AIX that will show the write status of a tape? We have sysback running via a cron job backing up to a tape. I want to be able to check the progress of the backup. I need a command that will show ne the progress of the backup or the speed of the backup while it is taking place. We do NOT have TSM.
There is no native tool for that afaik. Your backup tool has to give out that info.
If it doesn't you might want to put in a date command in your script that is triggered by cronjob for start and end to get a feeling how long it will take.
We use "backup_edge" backup tool which provides a lot of the information you are asking about.
On the SCO Unix boxes I use "tail -f path_to/nameofbackup.log" to monitor the backup log while the backup is running.
mt like tctl gives a general status about the device but does not show how much has been backed up - how should the OS/device know. This is a job for the tool one uses for backup.
Since you are running sysback as a cron job, where are you sending the output from the sysback? I know that at my last job, the clients that were running cron-based backups were set up so that the output from the sysback cron was sent to a log file for review the next morning.
Depending on the options you use with the sysback command line, you can get any amount of progress information for the backup: from just start/stop and logical volume progress - to a detailed progress report showing the percentage of backup completion (similar to the on screen display during an interactive backup) (this produces way too much data).
If you find the right level of verbosity for the back script and send the output to a log file, you could monitor that log file to find out the backup progress, similiar to mikep9's suggestion.