Gzipping ontape backups

Hi Group Does any one know of a way to get ontape to read back from a pipe? I have no trouble gzipping it up it is roughly getting 50gig down to 5 gig which is saving me a lot of space and now I can keep a weeks worth of backs ups on filesystems as well as tapes. The only fallback is that when I have to restore them I have to uncompress them to a tape before I can read them back with ontape -r, it would be nicer just to bring it back from the same pipe I sent it to but unfortunatlely it halts after reading in the first block of the dd. I know this is unsupported but would appreciate any ideas anyone has,

Greg Elphick wrote: > > Hi Group > > Does any one know of a way to get ontape to read back from a pipe? I > have no trouble gzipping it up it is roughly getting 50gig down to 5 > gig which is saving me a lot of space and now I can keep a weeks worth > of backs ups on filesystems as well as tapes. The only fallback is that > when I have to restore them I have to uncompress them to a tape before I > can read them back with ontape -r, it would be nicer just to bring it > back from the same pipe I sent it to but unfortunatlely it halts after > reading in the first block of the dd. I know this is unsupported but > would appreciate any ideas anyone has, Use a FIFO. awk '/TAPEDEV/{print "TAPEDEV /tmp/archive.fifo";next;}{print $0;}' <$ONCONFIG >C.tmp mv C.tmp $ONCONFIG mkfifo /tmp/archive.fifo gunzip -c archive.file.gz >/tmp/archive.fifo ontape -r

In article <3977598E.BCF7B06A@bloomberg.net>, "Art S. Kagel" <kagel@bloomberg.net> writes >Greg Elphick wrote: >> >> Hi Group >> >> Does any one know of a way to get ontape to read back from a pipe? I >> have no trouble gzipping it up it is roughly getting 50gig down to 5 >> gig which is saving me a lot of space and now I can keep a weeks worth >> of backs ups on filesystems as well as tapes. The only fallback is that >> when I have to restore them I have to uncompress them to a tape before I >> can read them back with ontape -r, it would be nicer just to bring it >> back from the same pipe I sent it to but unfortunatlely it halts after >> reading in the first block of the dd. I know this is unsupported but >> would appreciate any ideas anyone has, > >Use a FIFO. > >awk '/TAPEDEV/{print "TAPEDEV /tmp/archive.fifo";next;}{print $0;}' <$ONCONFIG >>C.tmp >mv C.tmp $ONCONFIG >mkfifo /tmp/archive.fifo >gunzip -c archive.file.gz >/tmp/archive.fifo >ontape -r Sorry for my ignorance, but how would this solution differ if you were to restore from a file instead? Thanks. Andrew Lennard andy@kontron.demon.co.uk

Forget the whole idea. I don't know where my head was at the other day! You cannot restore from a pipe without a custom app to write the archive to the pipe. The problem, I forgot, is that ontape opens and closes the archive device/file several times expecting it to rewind in the process. You'd need a custom app to detect the closure, drain the pipe and resent the archive from the beginning. Just using gzip won't work. <Begin Don Adams voice> Sorry about that. <End voice mutation> Art S. Kagel Andy Lennard wrote: > > In article <3977598E.BCF7B06A@bloomberg.net>, "Art S. Kagel" > <kagel@bloomberg.net> writes > >Greg Elphick wrote: > >> > >> Hi Group > >> > >> Does any one know of a way to get ontape to read back from a pipe? I > >> have no trouble gzipping it up it is roughly getting 50gig down to 5 > >> gig which is saving me a lot of space and now I can keep a weeks worth > >> of backs ups on filesystems as well as tapes. The only fallback is that > >> when I have to restore them I have to uncompress them to a tape before I > >> can read them back with ontape -r, it would be nicer just to bring it > >> back from the same pipe I sent it to but unfortunatlely it halts after > >> reading in the first block of the dd. I know this is unsupported but > >> would appreciate any ideas anyone has, > > > >Use a FIFO. > > > >awk '/TAPEDEV/{print "TAPEDEV /tmp/archive.fifo";next;}{print $0;}' <$ONCONFIG > >>C.tmp > >mv C.tmp $ONCONFIG > >mkfifo /tmp/archive.fifo > >gunzip -c archive.file.gz >/tmp/archive.fifo > >ontape -r> > Sorry for my ignorance, but how would this solution differ if you were > to restore from a file instead? > > Thanks. > > Andrew Lennard andy@kontron.demon.co.uk

Sorry if it seems a little hazy but a lot of people just dont have 50 or so Gig just lying around to uncompress files to. Hence restoring straight from a pipe without uncompressing the file to the filesystem. The ontape process is reading straight from stdout which is faster than reading from a tape device. I have found the work around for the problem (well it works for me anyway)