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From: bzs%bostonu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Tar(1) portability???
Message-ID: <1449@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 10-Jan-86 09:53:22 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1449
Posted: Fri Jan 10 09:53:22 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jan-86 06:06:51 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
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>From: Greg Earle <earle%smeagol.uucp@BRL.ARPA>
>I used 
>	tar cvbf 20 /dev/nrmt0 <file>
>on the Sun side (on a CDC 9 track), and then mt eof 2 to write end-of-tape.
>When I took it down to the Perkin-Elmer site, an attempt to 
>	tar tvbf 20 /dev/rmt/0m
>yielded back-and-forth motions on the tape drive (an older Cipher model),
>and a 'tar: read error' from tar.

Some of those CDC drives can not handle the blocking factor of 20, they
cannot read physical blocks >8K, use a smaller blocking factor when writing
the tape, I went through this a few months back with my 3B5 also, yes it's
brain-damaged, no, there's probably no other way around it. (And again, the
caveat, I still claim I blew the breaker twice on my TU78 using a blocking
factor of 1 so maybe for saftey's sake try something like 5.)

	-Barry Shein, Boston University