Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!NUSVM.BITNET!GBOPOLY1 From: GBOPOLY1@NUSVM.BITNET (fclim) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: problem with domain/ix tar Message-ID: <8806020850.AA15927@umix.cc.umich.edu> Date: 2 Jun 88 11:53:50 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 45 X-Unparsable-Date: Thu, 02 Jun 88 16:22:59 SST hi, does any domain/ix guru out there know why tar doesn't work on my dn3000 with sr9.7 ? i have used tar -tvf /dev/rct8 and the message is either tar: cannot open /dev/rct8 or tar: blocksize = 0 the tape was originally tar on a sun machine. i also tried using dd: dd if=/dev/rct8 if=x and the message is 0+0 blocks in 0+0 blocks out the size of x is 0. this problem is not only on cartridge tape drives. i am also having problems with mag-tapes. the message is tar: cannot open /dev/rmt8. these tar problems seem very strange as i have used tar successfully before. when i first got an account on our apollo dn300 with sr9.2 (we have only upgraded to dn3000 sr9.7), i've managed to tar 3 tapes without any problems. later, i couldn't do anything with tar. the vendor told us the problem was in sr9.2 and that apollo computers will fix it with sr9.7. but it looks like they have not fixed it yet. why did tar work with the first 3 tapes? does domain/ix tar look at some environment variable (like SYSTYPE) before setting its local parameters (as well as those of /dev/r?t*) and then extracting the files? i think the problem lies in the environment. otherwise, why would tar work so well with 3 tapes and then silently went on strike? most probably, my lab manager has set the environ for the 3 tapes and then unset it after that. please help as i received my tapes from abroad in unix tar format. any help is very much appreciated. many thanks in advance. fclim system programmer computer centre singapore polytechnic dover road s'pore.