6. Problems restoring

6.1 After doing a restore, the permissions on the files are correct, but all the files are owned by the user running restore (ie. ownership of files and directories is not correctly set).

This will happen if a user other than root runs the restore program. Under UN*X, only the root can change the ownership of files. Therefore, if wish to restore the correct ownerships, run restore as root. If you set the --set-ownership preference off, then taper will not attempt to set the ownership of files after a restore.

6.2 Restore give me a lot of warnings about unable to set times, and permissions.

See above

6.3 I backed up using taper-5.1.3 or earlier and when I try and restore, not all my files are being printed on the restore screen, or funny filenames appear in my restore screen.

There was an obscure bug in taper-5.0 to taper-5.1.3 which caused incorrect file counts to be occassionally written to the archive. Unfortunately, other than recreating the backup, this can't be rectified. However, if you run mkinfo on your archive, taper will create a 'fudged' info file that will allow you to use your archive normally.

6.4 Why does restore print Can't give warning & error count.

If you do not enable triple buffering, taper assumes that you haven't got SYSV_IPC support for shared memory aspects of SYSV_IPC. Taper restores in a child process in the background, independently of the main taper program and requires shared memory for the child to communicate with the main program. If you don't have shared memory, then the child can't communicate with the parent, and let the parent know how many errors the child encoutnered, hence the error message and warning message count will be incorrect.

6.5 How do I restore my files in the directory from which they were originally backed up?

By default, taper will restore files into the current directory (the same as tar). Subdirectories will be created as necessary. For example, if you back up the /etc directory and then run taper from /home/joe and try and restore this archive, a directory called /home/joe/etc will be made and all files will be in this directory.

To restore files from whence they came, start taper with the -r option like:

        taper -r / [rest of your options]

Alternatively, you can use the restore preferences menu. Simply set the restore path preference to /

6.6 I make a backup and all seems well, but then when I try to restore or verify, taper says `This is not a taper archive' or taper says `This is tape 0. Insert tape 1'

The most likely explanation is that you have not set up your rewinding & non-rewinding devices correctly. Look at the table below and check that your preference file has the correct devices set under tape drive preferences.

                  rewinding               non-rewinding
    ====================================================
    ftape         /dev/ftape              /dev/nftape
    zftape        /dev/qft0               /dev/nqft0
    scsi          /dev/st0                /dev/nst0
    floppy a      /dev/fd0                /dev/fd0
    floppy b      /dev/fd1                /dev/fd1

These device names may be different if you have configured your system differently.

See the section in the docs about tape devices for further information.

6.7 I make a backup OK but when I try and restore, taper gives errors in the log file such as `Creating device xxxx' when xxx should be a file.

You have set your preference `can seek' (under tape drive preferences) to TRUE when your tape drive cannot seek properly. Run the utility `test can seek'. If this utility says that your tape drive cannot seek, change the preference via a command line option, preference file or manually.

If the utility says your tape drive can seek, but you are getting these sorts of errors, please contact me with details.