Sun OS 4.1.4 to restore tape backup

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Sun OS 4.1.4 to restore tape backup	by Bill Degnan - 10/16/2026 15:11
For this to work, you need your Sun Box connected to you modern PC via serial connection (or Console) and yous Sun needs to be connected to your local network. What I do is use a modern PC with a serial port which is also connected to the same network. That way I can ftp files from the target PC from the Sparcstation. See other sources on how to successfully attach a SCSI tape drive to a Sun using SunOS 4.1.4. In this example I am using an Exabyte 8200 with logical attachment to /dev/nrst0. commands used to restore the tape mt -f /dev/nrst0 rewind cd /targetDirectory (the logical target directory) df /targetDirectory (how much space avail?) EXB-8200 tape can hold a maximum of roughly 2,300,000 KB (~2.3 GB), you want to make sure your avail number is comfortably higher than the total amount of data on the tape so the extraction doesn't halt with a "disk full" error. tar -tvf /dev/nrst0 (tape index - see what's on the tape) mt -f /dev/nrst0 rewind tar -xupvf /dev/nrst0 (actually do the restore) NOTE: -x: Extracts the files. -u: Updates/appends. -p: Preserves the original permissions and timestamps. -v: Verbose mode (displays the files as they are being written to disk). -f: Specifies the tape device file. how to eject cleanly mt -f /dev/nrst0 rewind mt -f /dev/nrst0 offline (pops the tape out of the drive) after making the backup to the hard drive, check the space available again: df /targetDirectory (how much space avail?) In my example 1,127,775 kbytes was available before restore, (1.1 GB). after, used space went from 629,541 kbytes to 706,941 kbytes. recovered files was thus 77,400 kbytes (about 77.4 MB) over 1 GB (1,050,375 kbytes) available on /targetDirectory --------------- networking --------------- SunOS 4.1.4 does not accept the netmask in standard dotted-quad format directly alongside the IP inside a single string, and it expects the interface name and protocol (inet) specified explicitly. Run this as root (assuming your subnet is 192.168.x): ifconfig le0 inet 192.168.1.250 netmask 255.255.255.0 up to verify you have a working network conneciton and the Sun's IP address: #ifconfig le0 (example output) le0: flags=63 inet 192.168.1.250 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.0 ether 8:0:20:47:57:6 ------- can you connect to the target PC? (on your subnet) ping 192.168.1.15 (assuming your PC is on this IP) (it should say "alive" if it worked) --------------- UPLOAD VIA FROM TARGET COMPUTER CONNECTED TO SUN via Serial Connection: --------------- 1. Create Archive on the SunOS Box On your TeraTerm serial console, run the following commands to bundle the entire myTapeDirectoryName folder into an uncompressed archive named myTapeDirectoryName.tar in your /targetDirectory directory: cd /targetDirectory tar -cvf myTapeDirectoryName.tar myTapeDirectoryName (You will see a fast scrolling listn of the files). 2. FTP from Your Modern PC use cmd to open an ftp session: c:whatever> ftp 192.168.1.250 3. Enter your SunOS username and password when prompted. 4. change transfer mode to binary ftp> binary 5. from within FTP prompt Navigate to your external drive directory ftp> cd /targetDirectory 6. download the tar file you created (or whatever file you created on the SUN box in the directory ftp> get myTapeDirectoryName.tar 7. quit to exit FTP. ftp> quit 8. From the C:whatever> prompt C:whatever> dir myTapeDirectoryName.tar Reply