Dear Corinna, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the blocksize. I've upgraded my cygwin installation to the very latest, and the problem seems to have disappeared. So, no worries anymore (I hope).
(The tapes were generated with block size 20. Does that happen to be the default?). By the way, you recommend reading /usr/doc/Cygwin/mt.README for the blocksize. However, the only lines in that file (or at least the version I have, which is dated 21 Oct 2001) are ---------- - This version supports setting blocksize to 0 to enable the variable blocksize feature since Cygwin V1.1.3. ---------- No clue what this means. Thanks for your help Kris Thielemans (kris.thielemans <at> ic.ac.uk) Imaging Research Solutions Ltd Cyclotron Building Hammersmith Hospital Du Cane Road London W12 ONN, United Kingdom web site address: http://www.irsl.org/~kris > > > > I'm trying to access a DAT tape produced on Unix using tar. The > > tape reads fine on another Unix (Solaris) station. > > > > However Cygwin gives me this > > > > $ /usr/bin/mt -f /dev/st0 status > > tape capacity : 1887232 KB > > current block : 0 write protected : > > no datcompres > > sion : on > > > > $ /usr/bin/tar xvf /dev/st0 > > /usr/bin/tar: /dev/st0: Cannot read: Permission denied > > /usr/bin/tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now > > /usr/bin/tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now > > > > The blocksize. Read /usr/doc/Cygwin/mt.README. > > Corinna > -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/