Backing up AIX to a Sun tape drive -- can it be done?

[Eric Giguere]

Here's the situation:  we've set up a TCF cluster of PS/2's running AIX 1.2.
So far I'm quite pleased with the performance.  I would like to start regular
backups, of course -- especially since the primary site has 200 megs of stuff
on it.  Obviously I don't want to backup to diskette!  Our Sun 3/60 (running
SunOS 4.0) however has an Exabyte 8mm tape drive (you know, the 8mm video
tapes -- can hold up to 2 gigabytes each) which seems perfect.  But when
I try a backup using a sequence:

	 rdump 0unf csg:/dev/rst9 /dev/hd2

where "csg" is the Sun's name and "/dev/rst9" is the tape drive off the Sun,
the following happens:

	 1. The Exabyte writes stuff to the tape for a few seconds
	 2. The tape drive then seems to reset and rewind
	 3. Now the Exabyte starts writing the main data

The rewind concerns me because I don't see why it's happening.  What's more,
typing

	rrestore tf csg:/dev/rst9

shows that the data written is corrupted -- all that shows up are lines of
the form:

	Checksum error 0, inode 0 file <name unknown>

This is very annoying, obviously!  Then I got to wondering -- "rdump" is
just a version of "dumpbsd"... however the Sun is most definitely not a
BSD machine.  Could this be my problem?

I'm looking for solutions.  I would prefer to keep the Exabyte drive on
the Sun since I have to back it up as well and I don't feel like moving
the thing from one machine to another all the time.

Eric
--
Eric Giguere                                       giguere at csg.UWaterloo.CA