Verifying dump tape consistency without restoring

[Jim Williams]

In article <27542 at mimsy.umd.edu> chris at mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:
>In article <1990Nov8.004559.3904 at thirdi.uucp>
>scott at thirdi.uucp (Scott Southard) writes:
>>Does anyone know of any utilities for verifying the consistency of a
>>dump tape?
>

[text deleted]

>I know of no such utility (though it would be useful, e.g., before
>moving a lab like we did here a few years ago).
>-- 
>In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 405 2750)
>Domain:	chris at cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris

The dump command under SunOS 4.1 has the following option.  I haven't
used this yet, so I can't comment on it's utility.

    v    After writing each volume of the  dump,  the  media  is
	 rewound  and  is  verified against the filesystem being
	 dumped.  If any  discrepancies  are  found,  dump  will
	 respond  as if a write error had occurred; the operator
	 will be asked to mount new media, and dump will attempt
	 to  rewrite  the  volume.   Note that any change to the
	 filesystem, even the update of the  access  time  on  a
	 file  will  cause  the verification to fail.  Thus, the
	 verify option can only be used on a quiescent filesystem.

											       
Spoken: Jim Williams             Domain: williams at nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov
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