General question regarding TAR?

[Chris Elmore]

I was un-tarring a file and recieved a "Tape Error 5". I realize that my tape was probably dirty or had a bad spot somewhere, but my question is this: if tar encounters tape errors, does it stop there, or does it try to continue to process to the very bitter end of the tar-ball? If any HP gurus here knows the answer to this question, I would be greatly appreciative. Thanks in advance.

Very Respectfully,
Chris Elmore

[Sanjay_6 · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

It would probably end there and anything beyond the bad area is unrecoverable.

you can use the dd command and skip certain number of blocks, but i do not think that it would help.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Bill Hassell]

tar (like cpio, pax and other classic Unix tools) has no capability to recover from a tape error. There is no way to skip over the bad spot, resync and read the subsequent files. tar cannot load a new tape for a multi-tape backup and cannot save large files (dozens to thousands of Gb). Use tar for non-production, non-critical file interchange and a commercial quality backup for the critical data. fbackup is the closest free tool for quality backups.

[Chris Elmore]

Thanks gentlemen, these posts answer my question perfectly. Take care folks.

Very Respectfully,
Chris Elmore