Accessing Tape Drive on another linux system

[amar_padhi]

Cool! Everyone Thanks for the input.

amar


On Fri, 2005-12-23 at 12:56 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-12-23 at 12:50, amar_padhi wrote:
> 
> > requirement is simple. Two servers exist on RHEL 3.0. The tape drive is
> > connected to server B. The databases are on server A. We want a direct
> > access to the tape drive on server B from server A. This way we will be
> > able to do online backups direct to the server B tape drive from server
> > A databases. Redhat support informed that this is not possible, i.e.,
> > tape drives cannot be shared across the network.
> > 
> > I am very sure this is possible. This is a requirement which every
> > multi-server organization will have and linux is more than capable of
> > doing this!
> > 
> > Do provide your inputs. Bottom line, how do I share my tape drive on the
> > network (for linux servers only).
> 
> The straightforward way is to execute the jobs that need tape
> via ssh from the machine with the tape drive, redirecting
> the output appropriately.  For example, for a tar backup:
> ssh othermachine 'cd /dir_to_copy && tar -cf - .' >/dev/nst0
> If your tape drive requires fixed block sizes you can
> pipe through dd with -obs specified to adjust as needed.
> 
> -- 
>   Les Mikesell
>    lesmikesell at gmail.com
>