To create a tape backup of Thuban, insert an SDLT tape into Algol’s SDLT tape drive, ssh into Algol as root, and run /root/tapebackup/backup-thuban-to-magtape.sh.
This script writes a log file into /root/tapebackup that should be reviewed for any problems that tar might have encountered during the backup process. See the script for details.
Assuming the backup tape is written successfully (check the log file), make sure it’s actually readable by running /root/tapebackup/tar-tvf-magtape.sh. This script will prompt you for a date in ‘YYYY-MM-DD’ format (supply the date the tape was written) and will then perform a ‘tar -tvf’ on the tape, writing stdout to tar-tvf-YYYY-MM-DD.log and stderr to tar-tvf-YYYY-MM-DD.err. If the tar tvf command completes successfully, and the .err file is empty then we can have some confidence the data on the tape is readable — and we have an searchable index of the tapes contents.
For example, if you want to know what ‘.sh’ files exist in any subdirectory of /data/psrdata/usr5/1913gr/’ in any of the backup tapes, you can cd to algol:/root/tapebackup and issue the following command (note the lack of leading ‘/’, which is not present in the ‘tar -tvf’ filepaths):
grep 'data/psrdata/usr5/1913gr/' tar-tvf*.log | grep '\.sh'
…which will generate a listing like this:
tar-tvf-2010-07-01.log:-rwxrwxr-x jweisber/pulsar 3017 2010-04-06 15:08:50 data/psrdata/usr5/1913gr/tempo2010/tempoloop-gl1.sh
tar-tvf-2010-07-01.log:-rwxrwxr-x jweisber/pulsar 2801 2009-12-09 14:08:08 data/psrdata/usr5/1913gr/tempo2008/tempoloop-r-s.sh
tar-tvf-2010-07-01.log:-rwxrwx--- jweisber/pulsar 2256 2009-08-20 01:38:51 data/psrdata/usr5/1913gr/tempo2008/tempoloopfordavid.sh
tar-tvf-2010-07-01.log:-rwxrwxr-x jweisber/pulsar 3017 2010-02-16 09:33:16 data/psrdata/usr5/1913gr/tempo2008/tempoloop-gl1.sh
tar-tvf-2010-07-01.log:-rwxrwxr-x jweisber/pulsar 3017 2010-03-21 17:27:19 data/psrdata/usr5/1913gr/tempo2008/tempoloop-gl2.sh
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