SCSI tape

Richard B. Johnson (root@chaos.analogic.com)
Thu, 25 Mar 1999 22:16:07 -0500 (EST)


Hello!
Don't know when it started, but recent versions of linux have a problem
writing the last file to a tape when using `tar` (yes I know about
--block-compress when compressing).

I threw away a lot of 8 mm tapes that were good until I found this out.

`cd / ; tar -clf /dev/st0` will complete okay. However....
`cd /new/file/system ; tar -xf /dev/st0` will fail with 'sense data extra
data not valid' and a SCSI bus reset, on the last file in the directory
tree, no matter how large the tree.

Doing `cp /dev/zero /dev/st0` works, and `cp /dev/st0 /dev/null` also
works with no errors.

A work-around of `mkdir /z ; `cp /dev/zero /z/foo ^C` to make a dummy
last directory with a junk file in it works to be able to recover
an otherwise perfect directory tree. I believe the EOF isn't written
anymore.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Penguin : Linux version 2.2.4 on an i686 machine (400.59 BogoMips).
Warning : It's hard to remain at the trailing edge of technology.

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