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Restore UNIX dump

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by mark-it

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I need to restore a Digital Unix 4.0b dump of 5 system partition file systems. I do not know the dump command that was used to dump data to the tape, only that it was the Unix dump command. This was done 12/29/99. There is data there that needs to be restored. 6 tapes were used to dump all of the data to tape. However, when I try to run the restore utility, I can only get to the middle of tape 3.

Does anyone know of a way to read a Unix dump tape other than the restore command or how can I use the restore command to get the data off of the tapes?

6 replies

by ken.cunningham

I'm assuming the data was dumped using ufsdump and will therefore be restorable with ufsrestore. IF this is the case, you can examine what's on the tapes using:

ufsrestore tvf

You can use mt -f fsf 1 to move to the next logical dump and repeat the above ufsrestore command to see what's on that.

Once you know what you're looking at, you should be able to restore the data using:

ufsrestore xvf from the top level of each of the filesystems you have identified by the earlier procedure. I should stress that this procedure works with Solaris systems in my experience, but others may know whether Digital has any quirks you should watch out for! Hope this helps.

by ken.cunningham

Sorry, should have specified that you should be using the non-rewindable tape device name if using things like mt -f fsf and ufsrestore. Hope this makes sense.

by mark-it

I believe the unix command to restore is slightly different on Digital Unix than on Solaris Unix and therefore he information you provide is not helpful to me. However, I appreciate your concern and effort. Thanks.

by cpfeiffe

Ken's points should work, but in doing this you may learn that you are getting to a spot on the tape where you have a corrupt image for whatever reason (header mis-match, skip in the write of file systems, etc.) Using the mt command you can move around from image to image and try to do your restore for all of the other images first and then go back to this one. It may be relying on some header information contained on another tape. This is rare and won't happen if you dump properly, but if you don't know how the dump was performed it is possible.

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