NorStore Tape Storage

Basic use

Instructions for basic use of the tape resources are found on NorStore's homepage.

Advanced use

A collection of high-level tape tools is available in /projects/NS2345K/tools.

disk2tape

disk2tape is a script for copying a folder from NorStore's disk area to NorStore's tape resource.

Run disk2tape -h to print detailed instructions:

Usage: disk2tape <path on disk> <path on tape> [none|gzip|bzip2]
Example: disk2tape /projects/NS2345K/hirlam_nobackup /tape/NS2345K/hirlam
Purpose: Copies a folder from disk to tape.
Description: <path on disk> must be the absolute path to the input folder.
The output folder <path on tape> will be created - with parent
directories if necessary - and must not exist before running this
script.
The input data is staged in form of tar-chuncks in
/scratch/ingo/copytotape. The tar-chunks are removed from scratch
after success transfer to tape.
The size of a single tar-chunk is about 15Gb if no compression is
applied. If compression is applied, the size of the tar-chunks can
be up to 60Gb as a compression factor 4 is assumed.
Checksums for all input files are computed and stored in a separate
checksum file. The checksums are used to verify the tar-chunks.

tape2disk

tape2disk is a script for retrieve a folder from NorStore's tape area. All tar-archieves are unpacked.

Run tape2disk -h to print detailed instructions:

Usage: tape2disk <path on tape> <path on disk>
Example: tape2disk /tape/NS2345K/hirlam /scratch/ingo/hirlam
Purpose: Retrieves a folder from tape and unpacks tar-archieves.
Description: <path on disk> will be created if it does not exist.

listontape

listontape is a script list all files that are archived in a tape folder.

Run listontape -h to print detailed instructions:

Usage: listontape <path to data-directory on tape>
or
listontape <path to checksum file on tape>
Example: listontape /tape/NS2345K/hirham_nobackup/BCM
or
listontape /tape/NS2345K/hirham_nobackup/BCM/BCM.md5.tar
Purpose: Lists the names of files that are archived in a given directory on tape.
Description: The script relies on the existence of a checksum file, with extension
md5.tar, that is stored in the archive directory.
If exactly one checksum file exists then directory path is sufficient
as input argument. However, if two or more checksum file exist then
the absolute path to the checksum file has to be provided.