First, which model and kernel version are you currently using? There were some nasty (think system lock up) bugs on some models up until about kernel v2.4.22. I think they were all IDE models (I had trouble with the "Hornet" 20/40 drive). Also, make sure your are writeing to the /dev/st? (rewinding) or /dev/nt? (non-rewinding) devices, where "?" is a number, probably zero. If you don't see either of those you don't have all the right drivers. Make sure you have SCSI, SCSI "generic" devices, and SCSI Tape devices. If you continue to have problems it might be worth a shot to try the Traven IDE driver as a module. Lastly, on one system I had to pass "-b 2" to tar to change the blocking factor to "2". To be quite honest I can't remember what that meant. On Thursday 15 January 2004 09:03 pm, Josh Trutwin wrote: > Due to a near fatal rm -r root mistake, I am looking to do a full system > backup. I've been using rsync for most of my backups to a different > system, backing up only certain directories like /home, /usr/local, /etc, > etc. But I really want to make use of this old Travan SCSI tape drive I > have. I have tried just using tar, but it almost always errors out due to > device files or some other strange file. > > Anyone have any recommendations? Is it ok if the system is running while > doing a full system backup to tape? > > Josh > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -- Ben Maas - Technology Architect Open Technology Systems, LLC ----------------------------------------------------------- eMail: bmaas at open-techsys.com Web: http://www.open-techsys.com Phone: 952.448.3121 Fax: 952.448.4944 Cell: 612.743.3674 _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list