Archive Tapes
Chris Lewis
clewis at eci386.uucp
Sat May 5 08:40:58 AEST 1990
In article <299 at zds-ux.UUCP> bjstaff at zds-ux.UUCP (Brad Staff) writes:
| In article <7804 at dmshq.mn.org>, pnessutt at dmshq.mn.org (Bob Monio) writes:
| [ Some stuff deleted ]
| > Some vendors have modified their tar and cpio programs to support
| > multiple volume archives. NCR has done this with their cpio
| > implementation. But, not all vendors do this. This is unfortunate
| > since some people don't have the luxury of large capacity tape
| > devices.
| Interactive has done this with 386/ix. Here is what I get when I run the
| following command: (Note that I am using the raw, not the block, floppy
| device.)
I've yet to see a version of cpio that doesn't "handle" end of media...
(Eg: System III source tapes...). And have seen few versions of tar that *do*.
The problem is that cpio considers *any* read or write error to
be end of tape and prompts for the next tape. Which, if the tape is
partially defective, is definately wrong. I suspect that some of the
other tape archivers do the same - I distinctly remember pax once continually
reprompting me because I had write protect on the tape. Bit confusing to
say the least.
I wish that there was an end of media errno. (Though some tape drivers
apparently do something slightly different on EOM versus true errors)
--
Chris Lewis, Elegant Communications Inc, {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis
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