Tape blocksize for 8mm
Chuck Karish
karish at mindcraft.com
Sat Mar 2 08:49:29 AEST 1991
In article <22985 at hydra.gatech.EDU> scott at prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Holt) writes:
>We have a number of IBM 8mm drives, both internal an external,
>connected to various RS 6000 systems. I have come across a
>problem using backup with the devices. In particular, if the
>block size device attribue is set to 0 (indicating a variable
>length block), tapes subsequently written with backup cannot be
>read.
>
>So, the query is
>
>1) Is backup broke?
Probably.
>2) Is setting blocksize to zero on the 8mm device a dumb idea?
It's impractical on the 8mm and 1/4" drives. It's necessary, though,
on the 9348 9-track drive; that one won't support tar or cpio unless
the blocksize is set to zero.
>3) Where might the legal attribute values for particular devices
> be documented?
I don't know where they're documented, but the block sizes that work
are 512 and 1024. There seems to have been a change between
3002 and 3003.
I wish IBM would provide a utility that knows how to make tape drives
work efficiently to be used as a filter between other utilities and the
drives, instead of building different partial knowledge of the drives
into different utilities.
Chuck Karish karish at mindcraft.com
Mindcraft, Inc. (415) 323-9000
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