taper works best with tape drives connected to a floppy disk drive controller. To find out if you have a version of ftape more recent than 3.0, you can look in your /dev directory. To download a recent version of the new zftape driver, point your browser to ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes/zftape-1.06.tar.gz. Or check out http://samuel.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape for the latest versions of ftape and zftape. For more information about the differences between these drivers, see the taper documentation in /usr/doc/taper.6.8.0a10. You can view it with a pager command such as less.
After you have determined which driver to run with taper, you can use the menu system to set up an interactive backup. Figure 31.1 shows the main taper menu.
Figure 31.1 From the main taper menu, you can archive and restore files as well as change your taper preferences.
Selecting the backup module brings up a three-part selection menu (see Figure 31.2).
Figure 31.2 The taper backup menu lets you examine existing taper archives and select files for a new archive.
To maneuver within the taper menus and screens, you can use arrow, Tab, and other keys (see Figure 31.3).
Figure 31.3 You can use various keys to maneuver in a taper menu.
Be careful: Use the Test Make Tape option only on new tapes because it will erase and write some data onto the tape.
Across the top of the backup module screen is the archive ID number and the title of the archive (you will be asked to enter a title for your backup when you enter this menu). The upper-left portion of the screen lists the files contained in the current directory. You can move to subdirectories by selecting their names by using the arrow keys and then pressing Enter (move into the parent directory by selecting the .. item). The upper-right portion of the screen lists current archives created with taper on the device you selected when starting taper. The bottom portion of the screen lists files that you have selected for the current backup. Select files by using the i command. If you select a directory, all the files within that directory are selected; you can unselect files by using the u command.
Now that you have some familiarity with the taper menu interface, you can use it to make backups. Start with a new, preformatted tape on a floppy tape drive (the process is similar for other storage devices and floppies).
Backing up with taper
1. Determine the backup device you want to use and ensure that you have the appropriate device driver (taper was developed using a Colorado tape drive, so it works well with those).
2. Start taper by using the appropriate command-line instruction (taper -T z, taper -T f, taper -T r, and so on—refer to the previous device selection instructions). After you have started taper, you can save this device driver information by using the Preferences menu so you do not have to enter it again.
3. After taper has started, enter the Utilities menu.
4. In the Utilities menu, select Test Make Tape.
5. Test Make Tape might determine that you need to run the mktape utility; assuming this is a new tape, it’s safe to do this now.
6. Select the Back to Main Menu option.
7. Enter the Backup Module.
8. Using the menu system at the top-left of the screen, select the files and the directories to be archived. taper displays the list of files selected in the bottom half of the screen.
9. When you have selected all the files you need to include in this archive, press F to start the archive. taper creates the archive and displays some details about it.
10. You might want to make a note of the title of the archive to use to label the tape. taper records this information in an archive index file for use whenever the archive is used. You can now begin selecting files for another archive, or exit the Backup Module and exit taper.
Be careful
Use the Test Make Tape option only on new tapes because it will erase and write some data onto the tape.
If you do not have a preformatted tape, you can use a third-party application in Windows or MS-DOS (for floppies, you can use the Linux utility fdformat—see the man page on fdformat for details). Some aspects of taper differ from tar. taper uses a proprietary compression utility by default; you can change the compression utility to gzip in Preferences menu. Also, taper makes incremental backups by default (it only overwrites a file if the archived version is older than the selected file). Likewise, taper automatically restores the most recent version of a file if several versions exist in different taper archives. Most of these behaviors can be changed using the Preferences menu.
For more information about taper, including available drivers (Iomega, for example), refer to the taper documentation (usr/info/taper.6.8.0a10).
SEE ALSO
• For more information about the Red Hat package manager (rpm) and glint, see page 520.
• For more information about setting up peripheral storage devices for use with Linux, see page 99, page 119, and page 133.
Backing Up with Floppy Disks
taper allows you to use several kinds of peripherals to back up files. Standard Linux utilities also work with a number of different devices, including SCSI drives and other external hard drives. Often, though, backups use a tape drive or floppies. Floppy disks are convenient for small backups, or at times when you need to store a few files or directories for physical transport to another location.