1/4 inch cartridge tape drives & tar

[MICHAEL A JENKINS]

You can't use the r option of tar with cartridge tape tarfiles, BUT you
can use it with disk tarfiles.  Simply copy the tarfile from the tape to
disk, add the new files, and copy the tarfile back to the tape.  Here are
a couple of examples:


	EXAMPLE 1: Tape contains a single tarfile.

	mt -f /dev/rst0 rewind			# rewind tape
	cp /dev/rst0 disk.tar			# get tarfile
	tar rvf disk.tar filea fileb filec	# add other files
	cp disk.tar /dev/rst0			# put tarfile


	EXAMPLE 2: Tape contains 5 files with file #3
			being the tarfile of interest.

	mt -f /dev/rst0 rewind			# rewind tape
	mt -f /dev/nrst0 fsf 2			# skip over first two files
	cp /dev/rst0 disk.tar			# get tarfile ...
						# ... and the tape rewinds
	tar rvf disk.tar filea fileb filec	# add other files
	mt -f /dev/nrst0 fsf 5			# skip to end of tape
	cp disk.tar /dev/rst0			# put tarfile

It's as simple as cp!  Hope this helps.

Michael A. Jenkins
ARPA: jenkinsm at eglin-vax.arpa