Help in reading Mangled TAR tape

[gwyn at brl-smoke.UUCP]

In article <165 at grpthry.UUCP> aw at grpthry.UUCP (Alan Whitton) writes:
>I am having problem retrieving (sp?) information from a tar tape. It keeps
>giving me a checksum error on a directory, and then dies after that. We are
>running a "flakey" SYS III right now, and I cannot think of how to get the
>rest of the files off so that I don't have to break them up by hand.

As I recall, the "tar" shipped with UNIX System III would act this
way if one used the wrong combination of blocksize and magtape minor
device.  Try specifying both explicity (and try both orders for these
options, as one of them may also be broken), as in:
	tar xbf 20 /dev/rmt0

I think I finally fixed all the major bugs in AT&T's version of "tar",
which I sometimes ship to appropriately licensed sites (System III does
not suffice).