>Anyway, there are two problems; the first of which is that I cannot
>scan the tapes in reverse order (as 'restore i' correctly suggests).
>If, when it asks which volume I want to read first, I tell it the
>number (counting from 1, of course) of the last one, it will read that
>volume through (if there are any files on it at all that it wants),
>and then complain about not finding any files that are actually on
>previous volumes, and stop restoring.

This may not help you .... but since dump prints out the inode range
used on each tape, and the interactive restore gives you the inode
numbers for files you're restoring (this is controlled by verbose mode);
you should be able to figure out what tape a given file is on
fairly easily, which should get rid of the need to scan them all.

--Ken