Linux Tape Device Emulation?

Mon Jan 16 14:56:24 PST 2006

> Specifically, what I'm looking for, is a method to interface a volume, 
> or block device, as a tape, so that I can
> then have remote devices read/write to that volume as a RMT (remote 
> magnetic tape) device.  I have a mail
> system that only supports local tape, RMT or NDMP for backups... NDMP is 
> way out of my budget right now (lowest cost
> software I've found that does ndmp reliably is almost as much as the 
> mail system cost.. about $20k), and I'd rather
> not buy a tape drive right now, if I could avoid it.

Sounds familiar.  I bought a tape drive, but used, and for cheap. 
(LTO-1 is at the right point on the price curve, and holds all I need on 
a single volume -- for now.)  RMT also works for me, but use large 
blocksize writes to keep things moving.

If there is any more money (which there might not be), talk to my friend 
Rex Walters at www.datadomain.com.  Their product addresses this, in 
general.  It's a box of disks, but does very good compression based on 
the assumption of sequential access, and dumps not being entirely novel 
from one day to the next.