error reading tape using tar

[mike worrell]

hi all,
We have another site that once used openvms unix but do not no longer. They are wanting to see what's on a tape that is 6 years old.
We have hpux at our site. He sent me the tape and i did a tar -vt and it runs about 2 minutes and dies on a file, ran on 3 systems and it croaks on the same file everytime with tar: read error. Also it causes my cleaning lite to come on every time the tape is done. Also tried tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0m and it starts extracting files and dies at the same one above. Does anyone know away around that one file so it will keep reading or is the tape obviously bad?
Any ideas?

[Rick Garland · Accepted solution]

Maybe the tape is not a tar.

Have you tried using pax?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Shanda:

I think your tape is simply unreadable beyond the point that you have gotten. If you have processed the tape on three different systems with the same result, you have a definitive answer. This is not a case of slightly mis-aligned tape heads.

Regards!

...JRF...

[HGN]

Hi

Is there anyway you could confirm it is in tar format if yes then there is a possiblity that the tape media is bad.

Rgds

HGN

[Devender Khatana]

Hi,

There is nothing wrong with the file. The I/O error indicates the problem with media. As it is quite old as well if some storage precautions were not taken then it can happen.

The reason for the error at same point while displaying and extracting also confirms a bad tape.

HTH,
Devender