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.