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> free, automated software for managing the system and performing tasks such as backups

Did you come across Amanda[1] or bacula + bacularis[2]?

I hadn't seen Amanda before. Bacularis looks like it might help with the complexity of setting up Backula. I might try that out.

It's hard to get the motivation to mess with these tools that have relatively little documentation/examples and are purely config file based.

That's fair. I used to use Ark, which was mostly a proprietary front-end for bacula, and that exposed me to the kind of futility of a "user-friendly" tape interface. Every tape operation from picking to winding to r/w takes so much time, and has so many subtle ways that it can fail, that it defies attempts at friendly user interfaces.

Bacula is great software, but yes, fiddly to set up and SCSI tape drives / changers aren't really straightforward either. It will serve you well once all is set up though.

I worked for a company using Bacula quite successfully for many years with a 24 tape system. It was much better than the proprietary software the system came with.

Wow, amanda. That brings back memories of using that newly released software (~2000) for swapping tapes daily on a drive hooked up to a sparc 5.

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