On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 05:33:32AM +0800, Scott Frisbie wrote:
> AMANDA: FILE 20040818 cvs.yadayada.com  /etc lev 1 comp"N program /bin/gtar 
> To restore,"position tape at start of file and run: 
>         dd if=<tape>"bs=32k skip½1"| /bin/gtar -f... - 
>
> It looks like I am still getting some strange headers.

Indeed.

> A couple of 
> other options are that the tape drive is going bad

Not likely; hardware data corruption tends not to be nearly as
repeatable as what you're seeing :-)

> or that maybe there is some config setting that needs to be changed.

Entirely possible...

Could you please do two things:
  - run the following modified version of Paul's little script,
    and post the output
  - also post your amanda.conf and disklist -- preferably as
    attachments, *not* inline, and *absolutely not*
    cut-and-pasted; so that if they contain weird control
    characters, those won't get munged or lost in transit

==================== begin ====================
TAPEDEV=/dev/nst0
mt -f $TAPEDEV rewind
while [ 1 ]; do
  dd if=$TAPEDEV bs=32k count=1 | od -c
  mt -f $TAPEDEV fsf 1 || break
  echo "===="
  sleep 1
done
===================== end =====================

Changes:
  - "od -c" the header (less readable, but guaranteed to show us
    *exactly* what's there)

  - don't skip the first header (doesn't seem relevent to Scott's
    case, but for the benefit of the archives it's worth fixing
    this bug...)

(N.B.: On our FreeBSD Amanda server, the script runs forever
because "mt fsf 1" always exits with status 0; just CTRL-C it
once the "dd"s start producing errors.  I left in the "|| break"
for the benefit of systems whose "mt" commands might be better
behaved.  I'm too lazy to fix it to catch the "dd" errors.)

Thanks.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics AT telepres DOT com
|  |  /
It must be said that they would have sounded better if the singer
wouldn't throw his fellow band members to the ground and toss the
drum kit around during songs.
        - Patrick Lenneau