> >I also find it annoying that I can't (easily) dump more than one file
> >system on a tape.  Do I really need a separate tape for my 16 meg root
> >partition?
> 
> Doesn't the non-rewinding tape device work?  I put 5-6 dumps on one tape,
> without any problems.

I suppose I could do that, but I'm a bit nervous, since the multi-file
handling on tapes doesn't seem particularly robust to me.

In particular:
 1. After reading one file, it takes more than one attempt to read the
    following file.
 2. It seems that it is possible to read past the EOF and keep going to
    the next file without closing/reopening the driver.  (This is just a
    guess though)

Here is my experimentation:

mhw ~ % mkdir tst
mhw ~ % cd tst
mhw ~/tst % touch a b c
mhw ~/tst % ls
a       b       c
mhw ~/tst % echo $TAPE 
/dev/nrst0
mhw ~/tst % mt rewind
mhw ~/tst % tar c a
mhw ~/tst % tar c b
mhw ~/tst % tar c c
mhw ~/tst % mt rewind
mhw ~/tst % tar t
a
mhw ~/tst % tar t
mhw ~/tst % tar t
b
mhw ~/tst % tar t
mhw ~/tst % tar t
c
mhw ~/tst % mt rewind
mhw ~/tst % tar ti
a
a
b
b
c
c
c
c
c
c
c
c
^C
mhw ~/tst % 

This doesn't inspire confidence, although I admit I've seen the same
thing on SunOS.  Could someone briefly explain the semantics of
multiple files on a tape device?

	Mark
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Email: Mark_Weaver@brown.edu           | Brown University
PGP Key: finger mhw@cs.brown.edu       | Dept of Computer Science

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