1/4 inch cartridge tape drives & tar

[Paul V. O'Neill]

>Is there a mt command to skip to empty tape?  Seems a risky way
>to archive things to me.

Hmmmm.... don't know why, but this doesn't work:
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yourhost% mt rewind
yourhost% mt fsf 1000
/dev/nrst8 fsf 1000 failed: I/O error
yourhost% mt status
st0:  warning, using alternate tape density
SCSI tape drive:
   sense key= 0x8   residual= 0   retries= 0
   file no= 0   block no= 0
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BUT, this does:
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yourhost% mt rewind
yourhost% mt fsf 1    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
yourhost% mt fsf 1000
yourhost% tar cvf /dev/nrst8 .cshrc
a .cshrc 16 blocks
yourhost% mt rewind
yourhost% mt fsf 24          (I knew there were already 24 files on this tape)
yourhost% tar xvf /dev/nrst8
x .cshrc, 7829 bytes, 16 tape blocks  (Sure enough--appended to end of tape)
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(4/110, SunOS 4.0)

Paul O'Neill                 pvo at oce.orst.edu
Coastal Imaging Lab
OSU--Oceanography
Corvallis, OR  97331         503-754-3251