Very Computer

by **David S. Stephenso** » Tue, 08 Jun 1999 04:00:00

has anyone got experience with using an Exabyte Eliant
or Mammoth with a PC running Linux?
I've been using an Exabyte 8200 successfully for several years,
but now I need to store more data faster.
--
David S. Stephenson FON +49-89-2180-7649
Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy FAX +49-89-2180-7640
University of Munich URL http://www.chemie.uni-muenchen.de

81377 Munich REAL EMAIL david (at) cup.uni-muenchen.de

by **Frank Bure** » Tue, 29 Jun 1999 04:00:00

>has anyone got experience with using an Exabyte Eliant
>or Mammoth with a PC running Linux?
>I've been using an Exabyte 8200 successfully for several years,
>but now I need to store more data faster.
>--

I have been running both on DELL PowerEdge4300 on the internal narrow SCSI.
No problem with the Eliant 820. Go to the Exabyte Website and read their
document titled "Integrating an Exabyte Tape Drive into a Linux System".
Basically, there are no compressing drivers available, so if you want
compression, you have to do
mt -f /dev/st0 setdensity 140
on Eliant 820 before running tar or dd. Set block size to variable
mt -f /dev/st0 setblk 0

Of course you can MAKEDEV nstx for non-rewiding tapes.

MAMMOTH LT is quite amazing. The tapes are a bit on the expensive side
(CDN$100 a piece), but it runs well. The only problem is that there is no
compression available as yet with the current 'mt'. I've been using tar
-z, but if I backup a remote machine with a slow processor, the z option
makes the whole thing crawl. I filed an option request with RedHat to
include the MAMMOTH LT support with the next version of 'mt'.

The only problem I had was when I tried to run large remote backups during
normal business hours when our Ethernet is very heavily loaded, I was
intermittently getting kernel errors "write command not a multiple of block
size" or something to that tune. The problems disappeared when I moved the
backups to cron and 2:00 am.

If you have any additional questions, E-mail me at your convenience.

http://frank.chem.utoronto.ca/electronics
Warning: Received flame-mail will be reposted on the UseNet in full

Very Computer

Exabyte Systems with Linux?

Exabyte Systems with Linux?

Exabyte Systems with Linux?