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Category: Backup Tapes and Disks

Algol tape drives

Published by admin-joel on 2006-08-02

We have two tape drives now attached to Algol. The first is an exabyte tape drive listed under

/dev/st0 (or /dev/nst0 depending on if you are using no rewind or not)

The SDLT 320 tape drive is listed under /dev/st1 (/dev/nst1).

To read data from the exabyte. Simply CD into the directory you want to put your data in. Then use the command:(must be run as root)
>>tar xvf /dev/st0

If this fails, try setting the bock size and density using these two commands and then try again.

>>mt setdensity 0x00

>>mt setblk 0

To extract from the SDLT tape drive, the tar command should work as well.

WARNING: When retrieving data from tape, make sure the directory you are in is empty as you can overwrite data files without even realizing it.

Old system logs, old backup lists, old hints

Published by jweisber on 2006-04-20

To access the old system log, which still has useful info, go to /docs/sysinfo/sulog. New entries should NOT be placed there but rather here on this blog that you are reading.

(For much of May and until June 7, it was on algols /data/arcturus/doks/sysinfo/sulog.–jmw)

(note that even earlier sulogs are in /docs/thuban-doks/sysinfo)

(other old gems like backup lists are under /docs/thuban-doks, like ourhints and dumps)

Bring-up plan for Algol

Published by admin-joel on 2006-04-13

OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.

2/4/2009: This is old stuff (old server, old setup). Move to trash? –James Fuller

The plan for making Algol the Arcy replacement:

  1. Register system
  2. Go through current Arcy accounts & purge inactive or old
  3. Get LDAP set up to authenticate off of ITS servers
    1. Set up accounts locally for all users on current Arcturus
  4. Set up email list on lists.carleton.edu
  5. Establish quotas for users (200 megs?)
  6. Install software
    1. IDL – new version
    2. SFTP server
    3. Mathematica
  7. Figure out directory structure (how do users share data?)
  8. Mount network drive script (HOME, COLLAB, COURSES)
  9. Set up AMANDA with SDLT tape drive ::frown!::

Note: we are NOT setting up the mail server.