Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!NUSVM.BITNET!GBOPOLY1
From: GBOPOLY1@NUSVM.BITNET (fclim)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: problem with domain/ix tar
Message-ID: <8806061205.AA21669@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Date: 6 Jun 88 11:56:20 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 28
X-Unparsable-Date: Mon, 06 Jun 88 19:35:23 SST

hi,
     thanks to everyone who replied to my question about tar.
does the blocking factor == 1 inherent in apollo cartridge drive?
or will it increase with sr10?  i am not too sure about the blocking
factor when the tape was made.  i just think that it's a drag to
restrict all tapes to bf to 1.  people who are willing to make tapes
for me do not wish to do at such low bf.

     another thing:  those who had replied did not consider my concern
about mag-tapes.  long ago, i managed to tar 3 mag-tapes successfully.
several months after this, i couldn't tar, even with the original 3
mag-tapes.  i keep getting "can't open /dev/rmt8" messages.  this was on
dn300 with sr9.2; i have not tried out dn3000 with sr9.7.  the mag-tape
drive couldn't have conk out in the meantime as we can still use
/com/[rw]bak.  i think /[sys5 | bsd4.2]/bin/tar was the one that got
conked.
   the 3 "good" mag-tapes are one that was made at waterloo, canada;
one from rms (fsf/gnu-emacs) and one from unix-tex (mackay@uwash).
these 3, i've managed to tar the first time round.  later, i received
one (mag-tape) from nelson beebe (his utah's tex-dvi drivers family) which
couldn't be read with tar.  this was the beginning of the end of the tar
on my apollo system; everytime i used tar after this, i got the above-
mentioned message.  (note that utah-science.arpa is a top-20 machine;
although i believe tar is tar whether it's on top-20, sun or apollo).
i passed this utah tape over to a friend who had no problem on a sun
3/60.  what's going on here?

    i hope that the problem will get fixed at sr10.
--fclim.