Re: ontape

On Sun, 11 Oct 1998, David Williams wrote: > In article <361CD903.7BF5@bloomberg.net>, Art S. Kagel > <kagel@bloomberg.net> writes > >Daniel Willems wrote: > >> > >> Hello , > >> > >> Working on a Digital Alpha runningWindows NT 4.0 sp 3 , we use ontape -s -L > >> 0 to backup our Informix 7.23TC1 database. > >> I want to use a "at" command to schedule the backup. > >> The problem I have is that the ontape needs a <newline> at the command line > >> after asking for the tape. > >> Someone told me that I should use the following command : > >> ontape -s -L 0 < enter.txt> >> where enter.txt is a file containing a <new line> character, but this > >> doesn't work ( still waiting after asking for the tape ) > >> > >> Please help > > > >Actually you need two newlines. Daniel, keep in mind that this will > >only work if the entire archive fits on a single tape volume. If not > >ontape will hang again, irretrievably, asking for the second tape to > >be mounted. > > > Hence use > > echo "\\n\\n" | ontape -s -L 0 | head -100 > > If ontape does hang e.g. tape is not loaded, tape drive fails etc.... > it MAY keep promting for the tape. The head -100 will stop it using > SIGPIPE after 100 lines.... But David, this does not solve the second tape volume problem it will just prompt over and over for the second tape then fail after 50 retries so you will not have your archive! Art S. Kagel, kagel@bloomberg.net