We would like to do backups to a remote DDS autoloader attached to a server on our lan.

mt -f user@host:/dev/nst0 .... works
OK
We then whould like to use mtx do load/unload DAT's.

mtx -f user@host:/dev/sg0 status ... gives /dev/sg0 no such device (sg0 is the right scsi device).

Searching and reading never says anything about mtx supporting remote
drives. Has anyone done this ?

Thanks.

I've done something similar on Solaris that is transferable. I choose not to allow rsh, rlogin, etc. or telnet. Everything has to be done using ssh. So, in my backup script, I may have a command like:

Then I can examine the output of the remote mt command by looking at the contents of ${STATFILE}.

My dump is a bit more complex:

Note that the dump is inside a subprocess so that I can capture the status code, and its output is piped to the su to the user backup which ssh's to the other server. There, the data coming in through the pipe is sent through dd to the tape drive. This is for a DDS/3 tape drive. The script and the dumps run as root. The ssh to the other server is as the user backup. In order for this to work, I set up certificates for the user backup to automatically login to the other server. Root is not allowed to login from another server.

The same technique would work with mtx. You would be using the mt and the mtx on the server where the autoloader is.

Thanks , but the question was just about mtx (not mt) supporting remote drives or not. We would like not having to modify our backup shells too much.

Unfortunately, I seriously doubt it does. There is no reference or syntax in the man pages for mtx for doing so. That was why I offered an alternative. Typically, backup software has a storage process running on the machine that has the tape library, and it is that process that receives communications and data from other machines on the network. By by running a remote command via ssh on the other machine, my backup scripts achieve the same thing.

I think you are right for mtx. Thanks for your suggestions.

I should point out that at some point the burden of developing/maintaining scripts and keeping up with your needs in terms of capabilities will become too much. Then you will want to adopt a real backup program. I reached that point about 2 years ago and adopted Amanda. I now have a tape library that uses AIT5 and I don't have to change tapes anymore. It just runs, and all my servers get backed up every day. Budget considerations for a library can, of course, be an issue. There is still one department that is running my scripts, and each of their servers (except one) has its own DDS/3 tape drive. The Jr. Admin in that department has to run around changing tapes several days a week, and the capacity is still inadequate to completely cover their servers. I developed the scripts over a period of a couple of years and spent a fair bit of time on them. The same script runs on all the servers with a config file. The server without a tape drive recognizes that the tapeserver is another machine and uses ssh to get to the remote machine. Lots of tweaking, logging, and error checking. Nevertheless, it ended up being less overall effort and far more gratification setting up Amanda.

We are also thinking about backup softwares (bacula , amanda ,...)
Thanks.

You'll find plenty of links here http://www.linuxquestions.org/bookmarks/tags/backup with good information and recent updates.