I have an HP Ultrium 448 tape backup that is being recognized without seeming issue on Ubuntu. I am able to see it at /dev/st0
.
When I issue mt -f /dev/st0 offline
, the tape ejects. When I issue mt -f /dev/st0 status
, I get:
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x42 (LTO-2).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN
When I issue tar -tzf /dev/st0
, I get:
tar (child): /dev/st0: Cannot read: Cannot allocate memory
tar (child): At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
I suspect that this is because it was created with the Windows Server 2003 Backup
utility. I realize that I can leverage mtftar
to get these contents, but how do I get the raw backup data first? Eg, I can't seem to list the file content on the drive initially here. Do I need to pipe initiate some kind of read via mt
and then pipe that through mtftar
in order to see the data structures on the backup tape?
Best Answer
mftar
should according to the docs be able to read straight from the tape so ...If you'd rather grab the data off the tape first and then manipulate with mftar then you can use
dd
egYou might need to specify block size with dd. If you don't know how the tape was written then
tcopy
can give you a report on its format.If you've got multiple images on a single tape then you need to use the non-rewinding device
/dev/nst0
along with explicit rewinds where required.