Spanning in Linux

[evilphantom]

So I am a little new to the world of tape backups. I have just purchased a STT220000A Hornet 10/20 drive. It seems to be working great on my linux file server and I am thus happy with it. I am currently using CPIO to do the backups. My questions are:

1. Is there a way to seem how much space is left on the tape after a backup is made? I want to see how much the data is being compressed on the tape.

2. Is there a way to span the data across the tapes so should the data exceed the 20 GB I can backup the data onto additional tapes? [I know I will have to change the tapes manually]

3. What would be a reccommended GUI for backups? Web based prefered but I wouldn't mind a GUI for KDE or Gnome.

The system is running redhat 9.1 but I'll probably be upgrading to Fedora Core 2 in the near future.

Any help or a direction on where to look would be most appreciated.

Thanks.

Dez

 

[evilphantom]

Sorry I forgot to mention that I also wanted to know the best way to keep track of the data backed up in the library.

4. Are there any good tools to keep track of the backup data?

Thanks again

Dez