[ale] DAT Tape Data Recovery

Dow Hurst dhurst at kennesaw.edu
Wed May 28 14:35:43 EDT 2003


It might have xfsdump based archive on it.  You would need to use 
xfsrestore to recover files from the tape.  1998 is not too old for XFS 
to have been present on an Onyx.  If you need help seeing if it is 
xfsdump, I can help you.  Can you come up here or send me a copy of the 
tape?  Xfsdump makes multiple 500Mb files so if a error occurs you don't 
lose the whole backup.  The inventory of files is written to the tape as 
well.  You might have a version 2 or 3 of xfsdump data.  I am using the 
latest which is version 3.  You might try the Linux xfsrestore to see if 
it can interpret the tape if you don't want to come to KSU.
Dow


Jonathan Glass wrote:

>I'm going to try the dd trick next.
>
>The backup was performed on an SGI Onyx box back in 1998.  The
>researcher is going to lookup the grad student's email address, and ask
>how he did the backup.  I'm not sure what type of tape drives were on
>the Onyx boxes, but am Google'ng like made to find out.
>
>Thanks
>
>jonathan
>
>On Wed, 2003-05-28 at 11:06, James P. Kinney III wrote:
>  
>
>>Hmm. Is it possible to dd from a tape device? That would give an output
>>file hat "file" can be run on to see what type of structure it is. Plus
>>it would make a copy of it.
>>
>>Are you sure that the system that made that tape was a unix system? I've
>>run into several windows backup tape that are useless with out the
>>backup software. Sometimes it has been version specific.
>>
>>On Wed, 2003-05-28 at 10:52, Jonathan Glass wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Good morning.
>>>
>>>A researcher walked in this morning and handed me a Fuji Film "DG-90MAA"
>>>(90Meter tape) and wants the data off of it.  I've tried tar, cpio,
>>>dump/restore.  Any suggestions on what else to try?  I always backup
>>>using tar, so my cpio and restore syntax may be wrong, but the fact that
>>>I'm getting tape read errors from all three commands makes me nervous.
>>>
>>>TIA
>>>
>>>mt recognizes the tape:
>>>
>>># mt status
>>>SCSI 2 tape drive:
>>>File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
>>>Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x13 (DDS (61000 bpi)).
>>>Soft error count since last status=0
>>>General status bits on (45010000):
>>> BOT WR_PROT ONLINE IM_REP_EN
>>>
>>>But tar craps out:
>>>
>>># tar -tvf /dev/st0
>>>tar: /dev/st0: Cannot read: Input/output error
>>>tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
>>>tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
>>>
>>>So does restore:
>>>
>>># restore rf /dev/st0
>>>restore: Tape read error on first record
>>>
>>>And cpio craps out, too.
>>># cpio  -i  -v  -C  32768  -d  -u  -m  -I  /dev/st0  "*"
>>>cpio: read error: Input/output error
>>>      
>>>

-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428
Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744
1000 Chastain Rd. Bldg. 12
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:   dhurst at kennesaw.edu
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com
Kennesaw, GA 30144
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