BTAPE(8)

💖 BTAPE 💖 — the btape girlies' guide (section 8, network backup, recovery and verification)

okay so bestie. btape is Bacula's tape interface test program — like, it's THE tool for poking at your tape drive directly and seeing if it's actually serving or just lying to you. it lives in section 8 of the manual, and this is literally its whole page. let's get into it 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

btape [options] device-name

yeah that's it. options, then the device. she's simple like that 🎀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

fr fr, this manual page documents the btape command — briefly. that's the whole vibe of this section. short, sweet, iconic. periodt. ✨

💜 OPTIONS 💜

here's the summary of all the options, no skips, no gatekeeping:

• -? — show the summary of options and commands. your lil cheat sheet 🫶
• -b bootstrap — specify a bootstrap file.
• -c config — specify the configuration file.
• -d nn — set the debug level to nn.
• -p — proceed inspite of I/O errors. yes, the original really spells it "inspite", and honestly? she's got main character energy, we respect her 🫡
• -s — no signals (this one's for debugging).
• -v — set verbose mode. she's chatty now 💬

🔥 COMMANDS 🔥

these are the commands you can throw at btape once you're in there. same order as the original, every single one, let's GO:

• autochanger — test autochanger
• bsf — backspace file
• bsr — backspace record
• cap — list device capabilities
• clear — clear tape errors
• eod — go to end of Bacula data for append
• eom — go to the physical end of medium
• fill — fill tape, write onto second volume
• unfill — read filled tape
• fsf — forward space a file
• fsr — forward space a record
• help — print this reference
• label — write a Bacula label to the tape
• load — load a tape
• quit — quit btape
• rawfill — use write() to fill tape
• readlabel — read and print the Bacula tape label
• rectest — test record handling functions
• rewind — rewind the tape
• scan — read() tape block by block to EOT and report
• scanblocks — Bacula read block by block to EOT and report
• status — print tape status
• test — General test Bacula tape functions
• weof — write an EOF on the tape
• wr — write a single Bacula block
• rr — read a single record
• rb — read a single bacula block
• qfill — quick fill command

ngl bestie, fill and rawfill and qfill all sound like they're gonna eat your tape alive — that's on purpose, that's what they're for. it's a test program. test responsibly 🫠

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

go read her sisters, they're icons too:

• bscan(1)
• bextract(1)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Jose Luis Tallon <jltallon@adv-solutions.net>. give her her flowers 💐

⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

this man page document is released under the BSD 2-Clause license. slay, legally speaking. ⚖️✨

and that's the whole page, bestie — written by Kern Sibbald on 26 November 2009, in the BTAPE(8) era of the Bacula manual. no cap, she's been iconic since '09 💖🎀🌈