Re: Exb8505C and TBTAPE Params

In article cfl@explorer.csc.com, wlyle@PROBLEM_WITH_INEWS_DOMAIN_FILE (Wayne Lyle) writes: > Can anyone tell me the correct settings for tbtape using an > EXAbyte 8505C 8mm tape drive. The currect settings are: > > TAPEDEV /dev/rst24 > TAPEBLK 126 > TAPESIZE 5000000> > From what I read, this is the compression mode of the tape unit > and I can write 5GB at 126K blocks. The drive is rated to go up to 10GB > with compression but I don't want to risk it. Should I assume that I will > get some extra without hitting the end of the tape? If I do hit the end of > the tape, what happens to the archive? > > Thanks in advance, > > Wayne Lyle We have a similar set up and use the following: TAPEDEV /dev/tapedev1 TAPEBLK 126 TAPESIZE 4500000 We use 4.5Gig for the setting so that we don't have to worry about the archive hitting the end of the tape. If the archive were to hist the end of the tape and it had written less than 5GB of data the archive would fail. This has happened to me in the past. I recommend giving yourself some buffer on the tape to prevent archive failures. If you have a large database and therefore the archives take a long time to complete, you're not going to want to have to start the archive again because of a failure. Better to be safe than sorry... -Debbie Shelton DBA McCaw Cellular Communication, Inc. debbie.shelton@mccaw.com