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I have some old tapes that were backups to servers from an old irix machine. I need to get the data off of them and I know they were written to the tapes via 'xfsdump'. I'm running ubuntu 14.04 server. Say I try to restore to a file like:

sudo xfsrestore -f /dev/st0 /path/where-i/want/files

This will get the tape drive running but then I get like it starts 'examining files' then moves on to the next one but never creates any data in the directory I want it too. I get two files made /orphanage and /xfsrestorestuff or something like that, but the orphanage is always empty. I've tried multiple versions of xfsrestore like using -b -i -m where I will explicitly say restore and it never does. Thanks for help.

A.Martinez
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  • So... even though today's xfs filesystem is a direct descendent of the old IRIX xfs filesystem, that doesn't mean today's linux tools are backwards compatible for tapes written 10+ years ago. Anyway, first step, since these are old tapes, is probably to `dd` them to a local disk so you don't risk irreparable damage from repeated attempts to read the tape. – Karen B Jun 25 '16 at 06:54
  • Unforunetly that thought had crossed my mind. But I was keeping my fingers crossed. Okay and btw do you know how to use dd take the data off? I have tried "dd if=/dev/st0 of=/path/somefile" but this doesn't seem to work even if I specify the bytesize – A.Martinez Jun 27 '16 at 15:04

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Really late answer but maybe it will help someone else:

It is backwards compatible. Simply add the -r switch to the xfsrestore command. I use it all the time for both platforms and it works fine.

example: 

sudo xfsrestore -rf /dev/st0 /path/where-i/want/files

Realize that the files restored under the destination will start at the root of the dump file created. It's similar to tar where the first / is removed.

chicks
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Rich Falconburg
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