> 
> Question: How do I communicate with this tape drive? It is the only SCSI 
> device in the system and I have no experience with SCSI devices.

Since it's a tape, it doesn't have a filesystem so you can't really mount
it.  All you do is write to the raw device (like /dev/sd0 or whatever).

> 
> I need to figure out how to mount it somehow so I can use dd, cpio, tar, etc. to 
> write to it. Would Amanda be a good tool to use?

All of those tools would work.  I'd stay away from dd - it'll work, but
isn't the best tool for the job.  cpio works ok.  tar is a really nice
backup tool.  Amanda is good and it can interface with any of the
afore-mentioned tools to do backups as well as plain ol' "dump".

> 
> If anyone could point me to some how-tos or web sites that could help I would 
> appreciate it. I may pick up the O'Reilly book 'Unix Backup and Recovery' in 
> the next day or two - I think that it could be valuable considering my level of 
> expertise at the moment.

Yes.  If you're going to be doing backups, you _must_ have this book.  I
got this book knowing little about backups (maybe more than you know now,
but not by much).  In no time, I was planning out a 10 gig/night backup
with a full pledged disaster recovery plan.  Unix Backup and Recovery is
_the_ best O'Reilly book I've ever purchased.  Get it right now! :)
It's 40% off at www.bookpool.com (as is every O'Reilly book).

Gabe

-- 
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Gabe Turner				       |  	   X-President,
UNIX Systems Administrator,		       | Assoc. for Computing Machinery
U of M Supercomputing Institute for	       |    Univerisity of Minnesota
Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation    |       dopp at acm.cs.umn.edu

"No sir, I don't like it!"	- Mr. Horse in "Fire Dogs"
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