Linux Tape Backup Software - Online Backup Software For Linux

 Linux is a robust operating system with all the tools you need already at your fingertips.  As with all computers backup is a necessity.  Tape backup is a trivial task and easy to do with linux. 

 To backup data files or directories, you only need to mount the tape drive and run a linux command.  Linux data backup could also be automated using cron.

 First off, you have to mount the tape drive.  By default a SCSI tape drive would be named /dev/st0.  To mount the drive, type “mt /dev/st0” on the command line.  “mt” is the mount command.  Look up “mt” under “man” for a full description of syntax, usage and flags.

 For a tape backup software, you can use either tar or gzip on the command-line to create a file backup. This will compress the files on the and write the tar file to tape.

 tar -czf /dev/st0 /directory_to_backup

 Or you can just copy the file to tape using the “cat” command:

 cat < /dev/st0 > /directory_to_backup

 View the tar, gzip and cat command help files for further documentation.  Typically, there are about two or three flags and switches you would be using on a regular basis.

 Another built-in script is “tpio”.  Linux data backup with tpio does the same things as other commands above but with more functionality.

 You can schedule the data backup using “cron.”  “cron” is a Linux system process which runs programs on a pre-set time.  After creating the backup script, load it to cron using “crontab.”  The syntax is “crontab <scriptname>”.

 Linux tape backup is easy to do using a choice of commands and could be scheduled without any hassles.