Exabyte dump problems

[George Robbins]

In article <10544 at batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> rogerj at tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Roger Jagoda) writes:
> Folks,
>  
> I have inherited a UNIX system (VAX/ULTRIX) with a SCSI Exabyte (OEM'd 3rd Party as usual) Tape unit. My question regards the parameters for the best "dump"
> command use. For example, we're using now:
>  
> dump <level>usdf 4800 6666 /dev/nrmt1h <f. system>
>  
> ...                                  Actually, couldn't we just put a
> very large number for the lenght (like 100000)? That number is just
> so the tape doesn't run off the reel during the dump, right? Well, our
> dumps don't take up 2.2G so there's probably no danger of that.

Yes, subject to the concern that you don't use such impressive numbers that
internal computations overflow...  I'd use something like sd 36000 6250,
which comes to "10 - 3600 foot tapes @6250 bpi, each of which hold not quite
200 M-byte".  Other people have their own favorite lucky numbers.

Uh, none of this should have the least effect on whether or not the dumps
are readable - I'd look elsewhere for that problem!

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr at cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)