Tape drives and protection of tapes (using tar)

[William L. Sebok]

> If UNIX(tm) were really a user friendly system, it would support
> `labeled' tapes and then you would have this problem. The system
> would read the tape label before writing on it to ensure it really
> was the one that was requested.

Until you needed to handle a tape written elsewhere in which case the
system would suddenly become very UNFRIENDLY.  Most of the time it has
seemed to me that the fancy tape restrictions have just gotten in the
way.  The trouble tends to be that each system thinks that it's tape
format it the only one in existence.  The rest of the world is "FOREIGN".

Dealing with multiple tape formats tends to be especially necessary in
astronomical sites.  Data is exchanged between different sites and different
telescopes.  This is often in different tape formats, often generated
on different machines.  Standards have arisen (notably the FITS standard
for image transfer) but much of the time they correspond to no single
operating system's "native" tape format.

-- 
Bill Sebok			Princeton University, Astrophysics
{allegra,akgua,burl,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wls