List and restore from tape error

[tqz]

Hi all

When I try to list the contents of my backup tape (backed up using bacula), either using the command tar tvf /dev/nst0 or the filesystem backup module of webmin I get the following error:



tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Cannot allocate memory
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now


How can I fix this, or how do I go about listing the contents, or restoring the backup if for example I wasnt using my backup software - bacula.

Many thanks in advance

t.

[majortom]

You are probably seeing that error because the block size is different. I think bacula uses variable block size, defaulting to 64k, so you could try tar -b 128 ....

Why wouldn't you use bacula to restore though?

Tom

[tqz]

Hi majortom

Thank you for your response! I am trying to think in terms of disaster recovery- i.e. the server completely dying and all data lost. I'm therefore looking into restoring the bacula catalog off an encrypted tape, so that I can then restore all the data simply in bacula from the backup tape or NAS.

I have been doing a bit more research and think I can use some of the bacula tools to do this as I haven’t had much luck listing the contents using the normal linux commands or doing any restores. To list the contents you would use bls and to recreate the catalog I would use the bscan after setting up my database server…

I did think it was something to do with blocks, but was then told by someone on another forum that Bacula uses a proprietary software, so you do need bacula tools to read the tape….

t.