Can tar dupe a tape?

[Rhonda Mokri]

On a HP-UX11i server, is there a tar command that could be used to create a duplicate of a tape created with tar?

I've been asked to make a copy of a LTO tape to another tape and have not been able to figure out if this is possible and the attempts that I have tried have not been successful. The command 'tar -cvf /dev/rmt/2m /dev/rmt/1m' does not work.

Thanks.

[Jeff_Traigle]

dd is probably your better bet.

dd if=/dev/rmt/1m of=/dev/rmt/2m

(Someone can probably pipe in on an appropriate block size for this if the default isn't wise.)

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

The most straightforward method is to use dd. Assuming the standard 20 512-byte blocking was used to create the tar image then
dd bs=20b if=/dev/rmt/2m of=/dev/rmt/1m
should do the job.

Man dd for details.

[Rhonda Mokri]

Thanks for the speedy reply to my post. The dd command is working.

[Rhonda Mokri]

Clay's response with the correct dd statement to use solved my problem.