1AMTAPETYPE(8)           System Administration Commands           AMTAPETYPE(8)
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NAME

6       amtapetype - generate a tapetype definition by testing the device
7       directly
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SYNOPSIS

10       amtapetype [-h] [-c] [-f] [-p] [-b blocksize] [-t typename] [-l label]
11                  [-o config_overwrite] [device]
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DESCRIPTION

14       amtapetype generates a tapetype entry for Amanda by testing the device
15       directly
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OPTIONS

18           Note
19           The options for amtapetype have changed in version 2.6.1
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21       -h
22           Display the help message.
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24       -c
25           Run only the hardware compression detection heuristic test and
26           stop. This takes a few minutes only.
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28       -f
29           Run amtapetype even if the loaded volume is already in use or
30           compression is enabled.
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32       -p
33           Run only the device property discovery.
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35       -b blocksize
36           block size to use with the device (default: 32k)
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38       -t typename
39           Name to give to the new tapetype definition.
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41       -l label
42           Label to write on the tape (default is randomly generated).
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44       -o configoption
45           See the "CONFIGURATION OVERRIDE" section in amanda(8).
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EXAMPLE

48       Generate a tapetype definition for your tape device:
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50           % amtapetype -f /dev/nst0
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NOTES

53       If the device cannot reliably report its comprssion status (and as of
54       this writing, no devices can do so), hardware compression is detected
55       by measuring the writing speed difference of the tape drive when
56       writing an amount of compressable and uncompresseable data. If your
57       tape drive has very large buffers or is very fast, the program could
58       fail to detect hardware compression status reliably.
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60       Volume capacity is determined by writing one large file until an error,
61       interpereted as end-of-tape, is encountered. In the next phase, about
62       100 files are written to fill the tape. This second phase will write
63       less data, because each filemark consumes some tape. With a little
64       arithmetic, amtapetype calculates the size of these filemarks.
65
66       All sorts of things might happen to cause the amount of data written to
67       vary enough to generate a strange file mark size guess. A little more
68       "shoe shining" because of the additional file marks (and flushes), dirt
69       left on the heads from the first pass of a brand new tape, the
70       temperature/humidity changed during the multi-hour run, a different
71       amount of data was written after the last file mark before EOT was
72       reported, etc.
73
74       Note that the file mark size might really be zero for whatever device
75       this is, and it was just the measured capacity variation that caused
76       amtapetype to think those extra file marks in pass 2 actually took up
77       space.
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AUTHORS

80       Dustin J. Mitchell <dustin@zmanda.com>
81           Zmanda, Inc. (http://www.zmanda.com)
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83       Jean-Louis Martineau <martineau@zmanda.com>
84           Zmanda, Inc. (http://www.zmanda.com)
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88Amanda 2.6.1p2                    11/05/2009                     AMTAPETYPE(8)
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