On Thursday 22 December 2005 13:30, Richard Fish wrote: > On 12/22/05, daniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've having considerable trouble with writing to a simple tape drive and > > I'm hoping that someone here has some experience with it: > > > > I'm using a Quantum Superloader, so I've installed mtx to manipulate the > > tapes. This part works without issue. > > > > Load the tape from slot #3: > > > > # mtx -f /dev/sg2 load 3 > > > > Now that it's in the drive, I try to tar something onto it: > > > > # cd / > > # tar cf /dev/st0 bin/ > > bin/ > > bin/bash > > <a VERY long wait> > > tar: /dev/st0: Cannot write: Input/output error > > tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now > > Oy, it has been a _really_ long time since I used tape, so this is all > from memory, but I think you need to set the block size of the tape > drive and tar to make them agree. Try: > > mt -f /dev/st0 setblk 0 > tar -cf /dev/st0 -b64 bin/ > > The above should set the tape drive to use variable size blocks, and > then use tar to write 32k blocks to it. That is if I remember my mt > commands correctly...
# mtx -f /dev/sg2 load 3 # mt -f /dev/st0 setblk 0 # tar -cvf /dev/st0 -b64 bin/ bin/ bin/bash tar: /dev/st0: Cannot write: Input/output error tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now Sadly, the same effect. The drive isn't even making any noise. It's hard to be sure anything is happening at all, but I'm guessing that the long wait before the error is the process of writing to the end of the tape. Should I be able to dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/st0 ? Is that even a good test? Suggestions/help are greatly appreciated. -- what will you do if all your problems aren't solved by the time you die? - random fortune nugget -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
