hey, i searched and read through a lot of interesting threads, none of which really pertained to what i need (as far as i know at least, thats why i'm in the newbie section :P)...

so here is what i need, some software (free) that i can use on my linux machine (redhat 9) that is currently working as a make-shift server that i can use to back files up onto a tape drive, the drive i am using is a Sony SDT-S9000, if that helps at all, and it needs to be a program that doesn't use tar, my boss wants something that he can have a lot of control over, and something relativly easy to use... any suggestions are GREATLY appreciated in the process of my learning ...

- James

These aren't recommendations, because I haven't tried them (we use something proprietary and not very nice) -

Bacula - cross-platform with a GUI, and fairly extensive docs, client-server so you can backup other systems as well.

Mondo Rescue also gets positive comments.

The SDT-9000 is a very common device, so there should be no issues with any software you choose.

cool thanks for the input, i'll have to take a look at those as well... do you (or anyone else for that matter) have any experience working with arkeia? i downloaded a copy of it and have a couple questions... the main one being, if the file system is larger than the tape, will it prompt me to put in another tape? or will it just quit when it runs out of space?

I'm afraid that I haven't used Arkeia. If you think that overflowing will be an issue, remember that you don't need to backup anything on a Linux system other than the data and the config. files - the rest of the system can be quickly rebuilt from packages.

ya, we are only backing up data, when we get around to doing it we will be installing whatever program we find that works best on our linux server, and it backs up all the data for each of the computers in our lab, which is proving to be quite a lot haha, i think we have our server filled up to like 95% capacity right now, and we've filled it all the way up a couple times so far ...

linux comes with built-in tape software... one which is tar (Tape ARchiver) and a tool to manipulate your tape which is called mt. to learn more, login into your system and do a man on tar and on mt. here are a few examples on how to use tar with your tape device:

[root@server /]# tar -czvf /dev/tape /home

that will stream the contents of home to /dev/tape. typically, it is /dev/st0, but i have symlinked /dev/tape to /dev/st0. you will then want to rewind your tape (you will also want to do this before you stream the data to your non-blocked device):

mt rewind

there you have it! hope it works! :-)

we are already using tar, we want something with a little bit more control, and something that we can easily monitor how full the tape is getting, what data got backed up, on what dates, etc etc, my boss just doesn't like tar and is trying to find something different to use with more of a graphical interface that gives easy to read read-outs and things like that...