Hi !

On 4 Jun 2000, Eric Smith wrote:
> > does it work if you remove the z option in tar. I have experience some
> > problems with my dds2 and dds3 when trying to apply gnuzip to the tar
> > archive. I have a ultrix with a tk50 i can do some research in this area
> > later and tell how it reacts to the option z in tar.
> 
> I'm not disputing that there might be a problem, since I haven't tried
> it myself, but the very concept that a TK50 might have problems with
> the gnutar -z option amazes me.  How would the TK50 even "know"?

It's by the blocksize. tar does fixed blocksize of 5k or 10k. If you throw this
through gzip, as gtar -z does, you get a non-blocked stread. This could do
some trouble to some tapes. (Know this from the old linux ftape driver, which
also wasn't usable with some other stuff than 10k blocks or so).

Hardware compression in tape drives just makes the data a bit bigger usually,
if they were compressed very good befor. Similar effect like gzip'ing a file
which is already bzip2'ed.

...Michael

-- 
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