Those are the unix commands I am using.  I don't know why script put so 
much funny characters in it.  I tried cleaning it up...

mt -f /dev/nst0 {rewind|fsf #|offline}
dd if=/dev/nst0 skip=1 bs=32k | tar tvf -


robin

On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 at 2:47pm, rwong AT mrs.mni.mcgill DOT ca wrote
> 
> > Another observation I noticed while examining the backups from 3-4 days 
> > ago.
> > 
> > It appears that the first tape does contain data.  The only spot that 
> > doesn't have data is file 1.  The tape header is there, file n >= 2 appear 
> > to all contain backups.  This would explain why the subsequent tapes may 
> 
> That's normal.  File 1 is the tape label.  Files 2+ are backups, the first 
> 32k of which is the header.
> 
> In looking over the script of unix tool use you sent, there are a lot of 
> typos.  I'm not sure if that's just in the transfer or what, but the 
> commands you want to run are:
> 
> mt fsf 1 (gets you to start of first backup image)
> dd if=/dev/nst0 of=backup.image bs=32k skip=1
> 
> That will put the (tarball/dump image) in backup.image after skipping over 
> the amanda header.  Subsequent runs of dd will do the same for each 
> successive image.
> 
> > end up empty, because (according to amtoc) it attempts to write that huge 
> > file to the 2nd tape to the file 1 marker position which it can't seem to 
> > do (it as in amanda? the vxa-1 system? I dunno which...).
> 
> Every tape should have a label as the first file.
> 
> > If I attempt to access file markers greater than 1, I don't have any 
> > problems and there are no syslog messages.  But if i attempt to access 
> > file 1, it keels over and I get messages in syslog.  I guess this is why 
> > amrestore is crapping out.  This is good in the sense that the backups are 
> > occurring.  But the amanda is setup to dump the smallest filesystems first 
> > and then the largest.  which means the level 0 dumps for 2-3 file systems 
> > aren't happening.
> > 
> > Would 2.4.4p1 actually help?
> > 
> > I am going to try tarring to a blank tape manually and see what happens.
> 
> This will answer the question regarding 2.4.4b1.  Make sure to tar 
> multiple times.
> 
>