On Sat, Jan 29, 2005 at 12:42:19PM -0800, Ed Gould wrote:
> > The tar files are complete. Even tar finds them, but only the *third* 
> > time (try 3 times, without moving the tape, find nothing twice, 
> > successfully !!! (there goes your backup) then the third time find it, 
> > but still leave the tape on the last block). Using dd and other tools 
> > seems to work correctly.
> 
> Attached is a program I haven't used for years, since I don't have a 
> tape drive any more, but it served me well for many years before that.  
> It scans a magtape, and reports the record and file-mark structure it 
> finds.  Maybe it can help you diagnose this problem.
> 
> Last time I built it (in 2003, YMMV), it compiled with:
> 
> 	cc -O2 -DMTIO -o mtscan mtscan.c -ltermcap
> 
> If your tape has data stored after a double-EOF (one suggestion was 
> that yours does), run with the -F flag.  I never wrote a man page for 
> this; if there's any real interest, I can do so.

In the spirit of "let no good deed go unpunished", I've added mtscan
to pkgsrc as pkgsrc/sysutils/mtscan.

Thanks,
Alistair