Interactive and tape drives

Ed Hall edhall at rand.org
Sat Oct 28 04:44:05 AEST 1989


In article <387 at rsiatl.UUCP> root at rsiatl.UUCP (Admin) writes:
>I have read elsewhere in the documentation (sorry, could not find for this
>post) that a buffered tape device does not return a reliable EOT.  This
>is echoed in the documents of AFIO.

This is true for all UNIX systems I know of, including Interactive's:
the buffered (block) version of a device will not return a reliable
end-of-media.  You must use the raw (character) device.  It's easy
to see why--the system can have several buffers already queued when
the EOM hits.  Even though the user successfully ``wrote'' those
buffers, they'll never make it onto the tape.

		-Ed Hall
		edhall at rand.org



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