I recently purcahsed an Archive Python DAT drive for my server. It would
create tar archvives but restoring would cause the kernel to panic so I
moved the drive to a workstation to play around with it (turns out I need
a blocking factor of at least 128 to keep the restores from causing kernel
panics).

The problem I'm now having is that I can't create reliable tar tapes!

For example:

crab % tar -f /dev/rst0 -c -b 1024 -V u1 --totals u1
Total bytes written: 2097152

crab % tar -b 1024 -x -v
u1
Reading u1
u1/
u1/addftinfo
tar: Skipping to next file header...


And I've also received this message after trying to put several files on a
tape with /dev/nrst0:

crab % tar -b 1024 -x -v
tar: Hmm, this doesn't look like a tar archive.
tar: Skipping to next file header...


Both the server and the workstation are intel boxes running NetBSD 1.1
with Buslogic 956C cards (although the server's 956C has newer bios and
firmaware).

Any help would be most appreciated

Rick Dante
rdante@pnet.net