[SunRescue] tape as block device?

[Kurt Huhn]

I thought about CD, but Solaris 2.6 won't let you grant "write" permission
to a CD - besides, the data is on a CD to begin with.

Here's the full problem:
I'm trying to install software on my Sparc Classic that requires the
"install_from" directory to have WRITE access.  Since the "install_from"
directory is a CD-ROM - I can't assign that permission (even if I stop vold
and mount it someplace else, Solaris still assigns read-only permissions).
READ and EXECUTE are assigned, but the install script looks for WRITE and
won't continue without it.
Local storage is at a minimum, so I won't have enough space to copy the
install files onto disk and then install it.  My other *nix boxen also are
slight of available space too, so mounting remote volumes is out of the
question.
I don't have a spare external drive to attach, so that's not an option.
My next thought was to use the tape drive as a mounted volume, just for
purposes of copying the files to tape and installing from there.

Does this explain it?  Sounds simple enough, but does it work?

Kurt


-----Original Message-----
From: Greg A. Woods <woods at most.weird.com>
To: rescue at sunhelp.org <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Date: Friday, March 03, 2000 1:44 PM
Subject: Re: [SunRescue] tape as block device?


>[ On Friday, March 3, 2000 at 09:13:07 (-0800), Kurt Huhn wrote: ]
>> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] tape as block device?
>>
>> I'm aware of the posisble consequences, but right now I need to get some
>> data stored temporarily then moved back.  I have no spare HDs or external
>> cases for them, so that's why I'm wondering about using the tape drive.
>> I've thought of mounting NFS volumes, but this is a *lot* of data, and my
>> other Sparcs don't have enough storage on them to hold it.
>
>If you're only storing it temporarly are you sure you need a real live
>filesystem and not just an archive copy of it?  Why not just use tar,
>cpio, dump, or something similar?
>
>In fact I'd almost be willing to bet that even if you need periodic
>access to this data during the time it has to be off on tape you'd be
>far better off to just get some extra tapes and swap active data sets on
>your system as necessary.  This would probably prove to be faster and
>more reliable than trying to use a tape drive for a live filesystem.
>
>Better yet if you have a CD-ROM drive on this system see if any of your
>friends have a CD burner you can borrow for a day to dump it onto CD!
>Then you'll have the best of both worlds.
>
>--
> Greg A. Woods
>
>+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods at acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
>Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Rescue maillist  -  Rescue at sunhelp.org
>http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue