Tape Backup Blues!!

[Ron Pfeifle]

In article <2574 at wb3ffv.ampr.org> howardl at wb3ffv.ampr.org ( WB3FFV) writes:
>Well to my suprise I found that the 150meg unit
>will read tapes all day long, but write, forget it!

I a similar problem using the sysadmin backup to do backups.  New (Unused)
tapes just wouldn't work.  *However*, tapes that had already been written
on were fine.  

Turns out that "/usr/bin/backup" has no problems writing to "unwritten'
tapes.  So, whenever I have a new tape, I first use /usr/bin/backup to
write an empty file to the tape.  Then sysadmin backup doesn't complain.

Ron