On Wednesday 04 February 2004 07:20, Rohit wrote:
>> Have you tried to test your tapes and tape-device by just manually
>> tarring stuff onto tapes?
>
>Will this work without overwriting tape label?
>
>$tar -cvf /dev/nst0 ~/home/user/testdirectory/*
>
>Thanks!
>Rohit
Start with a "dd if=/dev/nst0 off=scratch bs=32768 count=1"
then do the "tar -cvf /dev/nst0" etc.
Then to check the recovery, rewind the tape, then do
"dd if=/dev/nst0 bs=32768 count=1" which will read the label out to 
the screen so you can see its still there, then do the tar test 
recovery from there without rewinding the tape.

Thats one way.

One could also use the kept scratch file by using /dev/st0 which will 
rewind the tape, then do the tar -cvf stuffs, check the tar test 
recovery, and when done, rewind and do a "dd if=scratch of=/dev/st0" 
which will restore the tapes label.

The difference is that in the second instance, the label will be 
over-written so you must restore it, the first instance will not so 
it shouldn't need restoration on the tape.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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