Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ORVILLE.NAS.NASA.GOV!dat
From: dat@ORVILLE.NAS.NASA.GOV ("David A. Tristram")
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re:  tar
Message-ID: <8903231728.AA25626@orville.nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 23 Mar 89 17:28:46 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 13

Leif,
  After you read to the end of the tape, either with tar tf /dev/nrtape
or with "mt fsf <n>", you might try 'writing' to the the no rewind tape
device with "tar cvf /dev/nrtape files" or even 
"tar cvf - files | dd bs=250k of=/dev/nrtape"

What we do for multi volume backups is make lists of the files we want
to back up using find, and then use a utility we wrote called tarsz
that estimates the size of the resulting tar archive.  Then we split
the list into separate lists, each with only enough files to fit on one
tape.

Dave