Re: Practical maximums

Ron Johnson <ron(dot)l(dot)johnson(at)cox(dot)net> writes:

> Say we have a 7GB database. Is there a way to way to use 2 tape
> drives... Argh, I guess not, since the Unix pipe mentality presumes
> that the mode of operation will be:
> $ pg_dump /some/database | tar cvfz /dev/st0/db.tgz

If you use "z" you're compressing then using multiple volumes is not
possible. If you can abdicate of that then you'll be able to use the "m"
option and it will ask for another tape.

> What would be darned useful (but only, I think, with heavy usage of
> tablespaces) is:
> $ pg_tapedump /some/database /dev/st0,/dev/st1,/dev/st2,/dev/st3

You can create multiple files using the "m" option and then copy those to each
individual tape drive. That's the only way I can think of to redirect your
output to multiple tape drives.

For multiple tapes, tar will ask you for the next and all of them will be
/dev/st<drive_number>.

--
Jorge Godoy <jgodoy(at)gmail(dot)com>