Support for thread for LTFS in Unraid:
https://github.com/rezo552/unraid-ltfs

 

This plugin is adding support to mount, read and write LTFS tapes under Unraid. It is based on the reference implementation of LTFS which can be found here: https://github.com/LinearTapeFileSystem/ltfs

Please note that for the ltfsee_ordered_copy you need to have Python installed with the xattr module installed additionally.

Edited February 13, 20242 yr by ReZo552

Hey,

 

Im struggling to interact with the tape. I've tried both formatting an unformatted tape and mounting a formatted tape but both come up with the following errors.

ltfs -o devname=10WT050937 /mnt/user/upload

728c LTFS30216W Length mismatch is detected. (Act = 4096, resid = 0, resid_sense = -6144).
728c LTFS12049E Cannot read: backend call failed (-21716).
728c LTFS11174E Cannot read ANSI label: read failed (-21716).
728c LTFS11170E Failed to read label (-21716) from partition 0.
728c LTFS11009E Cannot read volume: failed to read partition labels.
728c LTFS14013E Cannot mount the volume from device.

I created an issue on GitHub here, but I'll add it here as well just in case that's not checked often:
 

I have been using this plugin with no issues on unraid V6.12.8 for months, but after updating unraid to v7.0 I now get the following error when trying to use LTFS:

ltfs: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.1.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This is almost certainly caused by this change for unraid v7.0 found here https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/release-notes/7.0.0/:

"Upgraded to OpenSSL 3"

I am not sure if the LTFS binaries need to be rebuilt to target OpenSSL 3, or if the older version needs to be shipped as part of the LTFS unraid plugin and pointed to by the LTFS binaries (so long as they don't conflict with the version unraid is using) but I would imagine either fix should do it.

Thanks!

You can grab the new version from here:

https://github.com/rezo552/unraid-ltfs/blob/main/packages/unraid-ltfs-2025.01.21.txz

 

you can install it with installpkg, let me know if its all good then I update the plugin. (currently I have no Unraid 7 nor a tape in my environment)

OK, I updated the plugin as well now. So the plugin now can only be used for Unraid 7. For Unraid 6.x one needs to manually install the old txz file (available in the github repo)

@ReZo552 & @rezo I've issued a PR on GitHub to make sure the plugin is backwards compatible and also that the icon shows up correctly on the Plugin page.

I hope you like the changes.

21 minutes ago, ich777 said:

@ReZo552 & @rezo I've issued a PR on GitHub to make sure the plugin is backwards compatible and also that the icon shows up correctly on the Plugin page.

I hope you like the changes.

Oh thanks, really appreciated, Im not a developer so this is really helpful... By any chance you use the plugin, btw? Do you have a tape?

10 minutes ago, rezo said:

Oh thanks, really appreciated, Im not a developer so this is really helpful... By any chance you use the plugin, btw? Do you have a tape?

I hope that you like the changes.
Sadly enough no, the LTO tape drives are a bit out of my price range but maybe some day I can get my hands on a used LTO6 or even a LTO7

1 hour ago, ich777 said:

I hope that you like the changes.
Sadly enough no, the LTO tape drives are a bit out of my price range but maybe some day I can get my hands on a used LTO6 or even a LTO7

Absolutely, thanks again. LTO5 drives are in 100-200 EUR price range, thats already 3TB of storage which is quite a lot. Greetings from Hungary to Austria!

I installed the new plugin on unraid 7. Despite the tape drive showing up in system tools,

ltfs -o device_list

doesn't show my tape drive. Any ideas?

how does the output look like? Mine looks like this
 

root@unraid-home:~# ltfs -o device_list

309aed LTFS14000I LTFS starting, LTFS version 2.5.0.0 (Prelim), log level 2.

309aed LTFS14058I LTFS Format Specification version 2.4.0.

309aed LTFS14104I Launched by "ltfs -o device_list".

309aed LTFS14105I This binary is built for Linux (x86_64).

309aed LTFS14106I GCC version is 14.2.0.

309aed LTFS17087I Kernel version: Linux version 6.6.68-Unraid (root@Develop) (gcc (GCC) 14.2.0, GNU ld version 2.43.1-slack151) #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue Dec 31 13:42:37 PST 2024 i386.

309aed LTFS17089I Distribution: NAME="Unraid OS".

309aed LTFS17085I Plugin: Loading "sg" tape backend.

Tape Device list:.

Device Name = /dev/sg4 (7.0.0.0), Vendor ID = HP      , Product ID = Ultrium 5-SCSI  , Serial Number = HUJ6125V4A, Product Name =[Ultrium 5-SCSI].

Thanks so much for this plugin. Just installed it and it saw the lto6 drive right away.

 

However, just fyi, the plugin install process (at least the latest version) seems to improperly mess with the permissions of the unraid system folders so key based ssh login stops working. It required a reboot of unraid for it to be fixed. It likely means every time this plugin gets updated, I'll have to reboot the whole server to make ssh work again, which is not desirable as I run a lot of critical systems on it.

 

Apparently other plugins also caused the same issue in the past.

 

Here are two threads with more info on it:

 

Edited February 16, 20251 yr by dumurluk

First off, thank you for creating this plugin, I have always wanted to have some tape archives at home and this seemed like a much easier way than passing through to a Debian VM and trying to transfer data that way.

 

However, I think I am doing everything completely wrong with LTFS.

 

Running Unraid 7.0.1
I am using brand new IBM branded LTO7 tapes in a (not new) IBM ULTRIUM-HH7 drive on firmware Q385 (my tapes were purchased from SHI so I at least feel good about them being legitimate)

 

When I insert a new tape, I run mkltfs -d /dev/sg23 to format the tape which appears to work just fine.

 

Next, I mount with ltfs -o devname=/dev/sg23 /mnt/ltfs -o eject -o umask=777

When I need to archive to tape I go to the top-level folder and run Tar cf - "folder name" | ( cd /mnt/ltfs; tar xfp - )

 

Initially this seemed to work, I could ls /mnt/ltfs and see the folders that copied, I assumed it was working and left it alone as my backups were running automatically on Monday mornings at 1AM.

 

I got an additional box of tapes and wanted to start to archive my media, mostly video and photos with some music.  From what I understand all of those media formats are already compressed and I shouldn't expect any further compression on the tape, which is fine.  I anticipated just using as close to 5TB as possible on the tapes just to keep some overhead and sanity.

I format the new tape and ran Tar cf - "folder name" "folder name"  "folder name"  "folder name"  "folder name" | ( cd /mnt/ltfs; tar xfp - ).  In this scenario my data added up to approximately 165GB.  Towards the end of the files, I continued to get "No space left on device" messages. 

 

My array has about 29TB of free space and the tape was just formatted.  I thought I did something wrong so I formatted the tape again and tried again but the same issue persisted, it gets to almost the end of what I selected and kept giving "No space left on device" messages.  I check tape logs by running sg_logs -a /dev/sg23 and assume that everything is copying to the index partition.

 

All files in the array are on 12TB 5400 RPM SAS disks.  Tape is connected via a separate 6gb SAS controller and the tape drive is in an external enclosure, the tape drive was never part of a library.

 

Ok, fine, let me put my Monday backup tape back in and just see if that's OK.  I put the Monday tape in, mount with the same command ltfs -o devname=/dev/sg23 /mnt/ltfs -o eject -o umask=777

 

Now if I try to copy files to the original Monday tape I get errors

Quote

acct@server:/mnt/user/Folder/TopLevel# Tar cf - * | ( cd /mnt/ltfs; tar xfp - )
-bash: Tar: command not found
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

 

I am sure the issue has to lie with me.  I just want to throw files to tape, bring them to the bank vault and rotate them quarterly.  If anyone could help me out it would be appreciated.

 

I will mention that this "Monday Tape" was originally formatted and SEEMINGLY working fine on Unraid 7.0.0 (although I never once ran a test restore of the data, only by checking ls /mnt/ltfs)

For anyone reading this in the future, I am pretty sure I managed to resolve all of my problems.  The problem was an improper use of the tar command.

To copy folders: tar cf - “directory1” “directory2”  |  ( cd /destination/directory; tar xfp - )

In order to restore from the tape just run the same command but change your source and destination directories.

 

If you are LS'd into your LTFS mount directory you CANNOT umount it!  Change Directory to anywhere else and umount will work. 

The only oddity was file permissions after I copy from the tape back to the array.  I was unable to browse/open the folder until I chmod -R 777 /that/folder

Edited March 3, 20251 yr by ItsFenri