Is it possible to simulate a tape device attached to a file in FreeBSD?

decuser

decuser

At the risk of causing all kinds of who knows what kind of discussion mayhem, I'd like to know if it's possible? I have this idea in my head that I want to be able to play around with tapes... the only problem is, I don't have any tapes or tape drives for that matter. So, can I attach a file to /dev/mt0 and do tar cv0 myfiles on it or what are my options?

Looking forward to your help :).

Will
 
We had proprietary Windows software that could do this at the tape backup software place I worked at 15 years ago. I'm unaware of any free or open options. You can pick up a used LTO1 drive for around $100 nowadays.
 
decuser said:
At the risk of causing all kinds of who knows what kind of discussion mayhem, I'd like to know if it's possible? I have this idea in my head that I want to be able to play around with tapes... the only problem is, I don't have any tapes or tape drives for that matter. So, can I attach a file to /dev/mt0 and do tar cv0 myfiles on it or what are my options?

Looking forward to your help :).

Will
Click to expand...

Don't you mean using mt, dump and restore? After all, tar is the same whether the output is to a tape or a drive or a pipe.
 
mark_j said:
Don't you mean using mt, dump and restore? After all, tar is the same whether the output is to a tape or a drive or a pipe.
Click to expand...
Sure. That's what I meant - basically be able to use the tape related utils with backing files.
 
decuser said:
Sure. That's what I meant - basically be able to use the tape related utils with backing files.
Click to expand...
Ok, then just use dump with -f - to output to stdout or -f file to output to file. You can pipe dump/restore, of course. Disk cloning used to be the forte of dump piped to restore.
mt is obviously not usable in that context.
 
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