*WARNING* on dump.bsd

[Jerry LeVan]

Hello,

Several weeks ago I converted my X11 "source" disk from the
old 5.2 filesystem to the "fast" 4.2 file system. In order to do
this I had to use the "dump.bsd" program and dump the disk to
my Apple Tape 40sc. See earlier postings for the song and dance
I had to go through to get the dump program to work. Apparently
the reformatting and restore operations went smoothly.

Yesteday I applied the latest set of patches from MIT and
accidently did a "make world" instead of a "make all", thus
recompiling the whole system. The good news is that it only
took four hours and forty minutes to compile the whole thing,
(with A/UX 1.1 it took almost exactly eight hours) the bad news
was that when I scanned the logfile I found xpr.c could not compile.

Examining the file showed that it was clearly damaged (it ended
in the middle of the procedure and vi was complaining about
null characters.

I dragged out the tapes and did a "restore" of the single file xpr.c

During the restore , the file was found, something was written to
disk, and the second tape was requested. Before mounting the
second tape, I "tailed" the new file and saw that it terminated
exactly as the damaged file did. When I mounted the second tape
I got a resynching message and then restore terminated. Nothing
was written to the file from the second tape.  I suspect that
dump.bsd tried to split the file across the volumes and FAILED

I retrieved a copy of the xpr.c program from a nearby school and
applied the relevent patches. The resulting program was exactly
the same length as the damaged program! (about 50k). ie the right
amount of space was allocated for the restored file but was
improperly filled.

I suppose that it is possible that the file had been damaged
prior to the dump, but the action of restore and its evident
position on the end of the tape lead me to think that there
is a problem with the dump/restore program and the Apple Tape
40 SC.

I have not been able to use tar to make a backup of the disk either.
(tcb always dies on the first write to the second tape).

It does not appear possible to backup (reliably) an A/UX system to
the Apple Tape 40SC using any of the supplied A/UX tools!

I would appreciate any comments from other Apple Tape users,
especially A/UX software engineers!

Jerry
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Jerry LeVan                           | Phone:(606)-622-1931              |
| Department of Computer Science        |                                   |
| Eastern Kentucky University           | Email:matlevan at eku.bitnet         |
| Richmond Ky 40475                     |                                   |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|      "The series converges so slowly that it actually diverges."          |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------