ITEM: E6171L

Can AIX V3.2.x read a tape written with BSD dump

Question:

Can AIX read a tape that's been created with the BSD dump command 
(the Berkeley system dump)? 

We have an 8mm BSD dump tape that contains approximately 
7-8 GB of data.  The tape was created on the BSD system with
the following command:

  dump 0unds 6250 /dev/rmt0h filesystem_name 

where:
  0 - 0 level incremental backup
  u - updates the time, date, and level of backup
  n - allows selective restore
  d - device (?)
  s - density of tape (6250)
  h - indicates high density

We tried the following restore:

  restore -ivf/dev/rmt\#

This failed with a message indicating that the -i flag could not
be used to restore backups by name.

Response:

The AIX rdump command seems to be a closer fit to BSD dump than the 
AIX backup command.  In fact, here is some information found in 
InfoExplorer about the rdump command that seems to indicate that you
may be able to use rrestore to read the BSD dump tape:

  The rdump command uses Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) 
  calculations to determine the amount of data that can be dumped to 
  a tape.  For 8mm tape, an artificial value of 6250 bpi is used.  
  This value is recognized by the rdump command as the bpi value for 
  high-density, 9-track tape.  6250 bpi is used by the rdump command 
  to arrive at a tape length of 33000 feet.

This looks like the settings you used to make the BSD dump tape.

Try using the rrestore command instead of the restore command.  You 
will need to create a /.rhosts file and put in your hostname and 
username(root) in order to run this command (since rrestore is normally
used on AIX to do remote restores).  For example, if your hostname
is host1, you will need to create /.rhosts with the following contents:

  host1 root

Be sure that the permissions on /.rhosts in 644:

  chmod 644 /.rhosts

The rrestore command should look something like the following:

  rrestore -i -f host1:/dev/rmt\#

if you wish to selectively restore certain files from the tape.

Response:

We were able to read the BSD Dump tape successfully with the AIX
rrestore command.

Thanks for your help.



Support Line: Can AIX V3.2.x read a tape written with BSD dump ITEM: E6171L

Dated: November 1993 Category: N/A

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