amtapetype(8)

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 configoption}...] [config] [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 labeled.
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31       -p
32           Run only the device property discovery.
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34       -b blocksize
35           block size to use with the device (default: 32k)
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37       -t typename
38           Name to give to the new tapetype definition.
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40       -l label
41           Label to write on the tape (default is randomly generated).
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43       -o configoption
44           See the "CONFIGURATION OVERRIDE" section in amanda(8).
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46       If a configuration is specified, it is loaded and used to configure the
47       device. Note that global configuration parameters are not applied to
48       the device, so if you need to apply properties to a device to run
49       amtapetype, you should supply those properties in a named device
50       section.
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EXAMPLE

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

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

90       Dustin J. Mitchell <dustin@zmanda.com>
91           Zmanda, Inc. (http://www.zmanda.com)
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93       Jean-Louis Martineau <martineau@zmanda.com>
94           Zmanda, Inc. (http://www.zmanda.com)
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98Amanda 3.1.3                      10/04/2010                     AMTAPETYPE(8)