On Sat, 29 Jan 2005, Matthias Scheler wrote:

> In article <Pine.LNX.4.60.0501252359120.23685@cyc.cyc.ubzr.bet>,
> 	"Peter L. Peres" <plp@actcom.co.il> writes:
>>> mt fsf
>>> tar tv <- nothing! $? is 0!
>>> tar tv <- nothing! $? is 0!
>>> tar tv <-this time it works ?!!
>> file2
>>
>> I tried this several times. What could cause this ?
>
> I don't know. But I get a similar problem with a DDS3 DAT tape and
> "restore" when I try to restore to partitions from the same tape:
>
> restore rf $TAPE -> first partition
> restore rf $TAPE -> error
> restore rf $TAPE -> second partition
>
> IIRC I could work arround the problem by using "mt fsf 1" after the
> first "restore". But I'm not sure because it has been a long time
> since I restored a complete system from tape.

Thanks, fyi, the problem seems to be on restore only. You can work 
around it by dumping the tape file to a disk file using dd and then 
using restore on that. I tried this, and dd works fine. It should be 
possible to pipe from dd to cpio or similar like this (not tried). Be 
sure to set the block size >512 for dd, or dd will fail too. I did not 
try to set the block size for tar, that may help too. My tape was scsi 
qic-150 with fixed block size 512 (cannot be changed).

I will also try a colorado 8GB drive later this week. This time it's an 
ide interface drive. I will see what happens.

thanks,
Peter