1/4" tape and record sizes

[Mark Brown]

benson at odi.com (Benson I. Margulies) writes:
|Path: awdprime!auschs!panews!uunet!uunet!odi!benson
|From: benson at odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
|Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
|Subject: 1/4" tape and record sizes
|Message-ID: <1991Jun3.024011.387 at odi.com>
|Date: 3 Jun 91 02:40:11 GMT
|Reply-To: benson at odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
|Organization: Object Design Inc., Burlington, MA
|Lines: 12
|
|My 320 has the usual IBM/tandberg 1/4 inch polymorphously perverse
|tape drive. (anyone know where to get a drive like this that writes
|both 60 and 150 MB for a sun?)
|
|In smit, its configured for 512 byte blocks. I write tapes with backup
|-i (for consumption of installp). tcopy, documented to report on
|record sizes, swears that the tape blocks are 65536 bytes long.
|I think it's lying. Can anyone convince me otherwise?

My tape expert says:
  The record sizes reported on by tcopy are not physical tape record sizes 
but rather the size of the reads and/or writes done by tcopy.  

Sounds to me like there is a documentation problem, or backup isn't
writing things out in the block size you think it is (when in -i).

I'm adding it to my list-o-things.


      DISCLAIMER: Any personal opinions stated here are just that.
Mark Brown       IBM PSP Austin, TX. | Don't you feel more like
(512) 823-3741   VNET: MBROWN at AUSVMQ | you do now
MAIL: mbrown at testsys.austin.ibm.com  | than you did when you started?