tar job not working

[bassey essien_1]

i need help running my nightly backup
on DLT 4000 tapes, when attempting to
extract from tape, error message reads
"blocksize=0, pipe broken"
Thanks, bassey.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

This message is usually the last message in a series of messages that, collectively, indicate a command (or commands) in a pipeline did not work (i.e. a command in a pipe broke the pipe).

From document #A1916938:

Why is tar reporting block size = 0 when I try to append to DDS tape?

tar -cvf /dev/rmt/ddsn file2 worked
tar -cvf /dev/rmt/ddsn file3 reported tar: block size = 0; broken pipe

Solution:

What you are attempting is a tar append, not a tape append. With a tar append, tar expects to append to the existing fileset.
Since a no rewind device was last used, it is sitting at the EOF marker and thus block size = 0. Must do a rewind (ie position to the beginning of the fileset) in order to do a tar append. On the other hand, if you want to do a tape append, you need to use the -c option with the no rewind device.

...JRF...