On Jul  5,  4:58pm, Jason M. Weber wrote:
> Now, here is the error I am receiving when trying 'Load_tape', or trying
> to do it manually myself.  I've trying all the /dev/st variants (rst, etc.)
> 
> ----
> st0(ahsc0:4:0): illegal request
> st0: cannot set selected mode
> st0: bad request, must be between 0 and 512
> tar: read error on /dev/rst0 : Input/output error
> ----

  This would appear to be happening because the tape drive is reporting
the minimum block size to be 0 and the maximum block size to be 512.  The
tape driver is going to assume that the tape is capable of variable length
records.  The default block size that tar will attempt to use is probably
20, which will be outside the range of what the tape drive says it can
handle.

  I believe that the Archive Viper is a QIC-150 tape that can only do
fixed length records of 512 bytes.  The Archive Viper is recognized as
a "rogue" drive, and one of the entries for the Viper will force QIC-150
mode, including the fixed-length 512 byte blocks.  To select this entry,
you will need to create a /dev/rst? entry with a minor number of 4 instead
of 0).  I think that should work.

Michael

-- 
Michael L. Hitch			INTERNET:  osymh@montana.edu
Computer Consultant
Office of Systems and Computing Services
Montana State University	Bozeman, MT	USA