Tar backup error

[Reshma Malusare]

We fired tar backup command on solaris server & got the following error:

tar: blocksize = 0
tar: backspace over record failed

Can somebody tell me what exactly error means?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Reshma,

Can you provide the exact command you used?

Is there sufficient diskspace for the archive?

The second error message indicates possibly illegal or invisible charaters in filenames you are attempting to ad to the tarball.

I'd look at that first. Doesn't Solaris have an ITRC? Guess not.

SEP

[spex]

Hello,

It appears that you are attempting to append to a tape using 'tar' ('tar -r...'). It's possible that the tape drive's driver does not support the backward space ('bss') operation. You should be able to confirm this with 'mt eod && mt bss 1'. Even if this operation is supported, it's rather dangerous, as the write head could be misaligned, causing existing data to be overwritten.

It's much safer to write to a fresh tape.

PCS

[Reshma Malusare]

Hi Steven,
We are working in HP-unix backround only..but we are supposed to handle this one solaris server which is in our scope.

Command we fired

tar -cvf /dev/rmt/1m /u02/dba > u02dba.txt

[Steven Schweda]

> Doesn't Solaris have an ITRC? Guess not.

Guess again?

http://sunsolve.sun.com
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/home/index.html

It might also be interesting to know which
type of tape drive is being used, and what
state it's in (clean tape, used tape, ...).

Do "mt" commands fail, too, or is it a
"tar"-only problem?

[Dennis Handly]

>SEP: The second error message indicates possibly illegal or invisible charaters

You never worked with mag tape? ;-)
backspace is a tape motion command.
See mt(1) bsr, or bss as PCS mentioned.