[clug] multiple tape drives

[Daniel Pittman]

David Schoen <neerolyte at gmail.com> writes:

> Disclaimer: I've never actually played with tape drives, so this is
> all based on assumptions.
>
> My first thought was UUID but I'm guessing that would be per tape not
> tape drive.

No, the drive should have a unique ID.  The tapes, in fact, generally
don't contain anything generically identifying; some-but-not-all backup
software writes ANSI standard tape labels or whatever, but tar(1)
doesn't, and amanda write their own by default...

> Can you pull up the serial number of each drive to ensure that the
> device you're writing too is the right one?

What you almost certainly want is to use the udev generated names; see
/etc/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-storage-tape.rules[1]

They should see you right.  Either use them directly (preferable) or
write custom rules to ensure they map appropriately to /dev/nst?

You /should/ have something akin to /dev/tape/by-id/[bus]-[serial]-nst
available for you; the bus and serial number come from the device.

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  on Debian; similar rules /should/ be present on other
     distributions, or write the list and I will repost them.