*BSD News Article 83891


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From: Gunther Schadow <gunther@gusw.dialup.fu-berlin.de>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: dump and DAT, what block/density to use?
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 18:51:13 +0100
Organization: Freie Universitaet Berlin
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To: msmith@3-cities.com

Mark Smith wrote:

> I'm trying to use dump to backup a couple of file systems to a single
> 2G DAT tape.  The problem is that it gets about 300MB into a tape and
> wants a new one.  What block size and density options for dump should
> I use to get the full 2G of tape?

Yes, this is *very* awkward. I tried to guess the calcualtions of length
capacity and density from the dump.c source code, but I don't understand
the problems that are solved here. For me capacity is length * density
and a byte is 8 bits, but what dump.c calculated there is obscure to me.
Well, I gave up on this. And fortunately our fine DAT drive has enough
capacity that thinking about it is not needed. Here are my dump
commands:

dump u0fbB /dev/nrst0 10 204810241024

don't care about the B option, it's just long enopugh to avoid dump
calculate a capacity *smaller* than you actually have. Beware that for
10240 bytes per block you need to specify b 10 for dump, but b 20 for
tar. BTW never use the erst device, since dump hangs trying to close the
device when the tape is already offline. I always use nrst since I fill
my tapes up using mt fsf/bsf seeking files back and forth. It's great!


regards
-- 
Gunther Schadow-----------Windsteiner Weg 54a, Berlin 14165, FR. Germany
Dept. of Anaesthesia, Benjamin Franklin Univerity Hospital, Berlin.
gusw@fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de         http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~gusw
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