I'm currently seeking somebody who knows about the "star" backup tape archiver command very well. Many years ago, i was seeking something command line based to backup our large video files to LTO-5 backup drive. So i started to use "star" with "artype" (archive type) = pax (OSIX-1003.1-2001 Standard Data Interchange format). It supports many desirable characteristics:
- File size is unlimited
- uid/gid/uname/gidname is unlimited
- major/minor is limited to 2097151
- Sparse files will be filled up with zeroes
The problem i'm facing is that i can't find a way to skip on tape directly to the file i want via offset (like plain old "mt fsf"). When i record the files on tape, i have the offset in the log fil of every tape. Another problem i have is i don't know how to take a huge directory that would span multiple tapes. Is there anybody that can help me with this?
I had a look to LTFS but it seems to be complicated to get the software to works with the LTO-5 drive (HP Ultrium), at least the last time i checked that. Anybody that can speak about their experience with LTFS?
Many thanks!