Hi all,
How to avoid automatic rewind and eject after a backup process. The
aim is to save many archives in the same tape. The O.S is Redhat AS3.
Thanks

As far as I understand, a tape can only hold one contigous data stream. It has no file system, so I'm not sure how you'd access each of the archives.

On other systems like AIX you can save many archives files in the same tape by using specific names of special files. Another example is libraries .

It depends upon the tape drive, and the software used. Most tape drives have the ability of writing special "markers" on to the tape in order to keep track of multiple archives. As Matir stated, tape drives hold a contiguous data stream and have no file system. However, it is possible to write multiple archives on a tape by using (if available) drive firmware that writes out special "markers". One of the "markers" is an "end-of-block", or EOB marker. Another common "marker" is an "end-of-tape", or EOT marker. The EOB marker is used to mark the end of one contiguous stream called an archive, and is written when the original output stream has been closed. The EOT marker is used to mark the logical end of the tape and is written when the tape unit is finally closed at the end of a complete backup session.

All of this long winded verbiage was an attempt to say that yes it is possible to write multiple archives on to a single tape, but that it really depends upon the tape drive (and what the firmware allows), along with the software that may be capable of using and understanding those tape markers.

There are a number of DAT tape drives and general purpose UNIX utilities that provide this support, but it has been too long since I have used them and do not remember the names, sorry.

The device /dev/nst0 will not rewind the tape upon completion of a tape operation.

What backup application are you running?

I am using Netbackup.
Thanks again for all the helps.

I would guess the software has the capablility but I am unfamilar with the application.

From my experience, it indeed depends on the device name: there's one with rewind, and one without.

Yves.