Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bria!mike Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: reading in ascii files on a tape using tar? Message-ID: <372@bria> Date: 20 Jan 91 01:24:30 GMT References: Reply-To: uunet!bria!mike (Michael Stefanik) Organization: Briareus Corporation, Los Angeles, CA Lines: 24 In article romulus.rutgers.edu!fuentes (Carlos 666 Trott) writes: >I will be getting several dozen labelled and unlabelled ascii >tapes (some created on vaxen, others on big blue). What command >whould I use to copy these files from tape to disk. Assuming that you know what the device name is for your tape (let's use /dev/rmt0 in this example), your best bet is 'dd'; such as: dd if=/dev/rmt0 of=/tmp/diskfile The 'dd' tool assumes nothing about the way that the tapes were created, etc. It will just dump from the tape to a file; if the architecture that you're read from is "backwards" (bytes are swapped), then add "conv=swab" to the above line (ie: dd if=/dev/rmt0 of=/tmp/diskfile conv=swab). This should do it ... those files will be in one large file which you will have to split up (by hand, or by writing a program to do it). Good luck! -- Michael Stefanik, Systems Engineer (JOAT), Briareus Corporation UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike -- technoignorami (tek'no-ig'no-ram`i) a group of individuals that are constantly found to be saying things like "Well, it works on my DOS machine ..."