# sharing a tape drive on my LAN

## Cr0t

Does anyone know how to share a raw tape device on the network? I have a DLT drive on one machine (linux), but I need my Solaris server to use it.

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## Cr0t

I know that I should use iSCSI, however I never set it up in Linux.... just Solaris.

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## ianw1974

What program are you using for backup?  I know that with bacula, you can use the bacula-sd on one machine, and run the bacula-dir on another machine and it should connect and use the remote tape drive providing bacula is configured correctly.  Or at least, I'm pretty sure that's how it would work.

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## Cr0t

I wanted to give Amanda a shot. NBU and gentoo doesn't work that well.

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## ianw1974

I've not used amanda, but it should work similarly in the way that bacula does.  Although I was going to try amanda, I found bacula easier to configure.  But it certainly looks like you should be able to see it from another machine, provided you've got some amanda service similar to bacula-sd (storage daemon) that manages the tape drive that another server can use to connect to.

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## energyman76b

well, if you use tar&mbuffer - mbuffer has a networking option. You start backup on one machine and sent the stuff to mbuffer on the other. man mbuffer tells you how.

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