tar restore from tape

[renarios]

Hi all,

I currently installed fedora core 5 on my machine and I have to restore some files from my dds3 tape. If I issue the command tar -xvf /dev/nst0 -f $file I receive an error.
Can anyone tell me what the default blocksize for tar is on fc4 and if that is different from fc5?

tia,

Renarios

[Stuart Browne]

There shouldn't be one.

Things to do:

First, what was the error you received? You didn't say.

Also the tar command you've given has two -f's. Why?

Can you list the tape with a flat tar:

tar tvf /dev/nst0
(NOTE: No, you don't need the -, and you can stack the command arguments).

Can you read data from the tape using 'dd' after doing an 'mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind' ?

What make/model of drive and how is it connected? You've said 'DDS3', so it's probably a SCSI drive, contents of '/proc/scsi/scsi' ?

[FLQ]

Hi Renarios,

the correct syntax for tar is as follow:

tar xvf /dev/nst0 $file

You should check if the $file is/are in archive by using:

tar tvf /dev/nst0 $file

HTH

Francis