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Reading SCO tapes on Linux

This is the problem & a solution from the time I had to read some old SCO tapes on a Linux 2.4 system. I also ran into the same problem with tapes created on a 2.2 kernel linux. This might be useful for someone someday.

The old tapes were written with an HP dds drive, which used variable blocking. I curently use an IBM dds-4 dat [ it is made by Seagate I assume, as /proc/scsi/scsi lists it as SEAGATE 06240-xxx ], which used fixed blocks.

There is a change in 2.4 versions of linux I'm using [mandrake and redhat] which make reading the old tapes impossible [for me].

When I try:

• 1- use tape made with the HP in the Ibm dds-4 drive.
• 2- mt -f /dev/st0 setblk 0
• 3- tar xvf /dev/st0

I get this error:

tar: /dev/st0: Cannot read: Cannot allocate memory   
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
 

If I adjust the software block size in tar, I get the same error.

I get a similiar error if I try 'dd' . /tar/tvf /dev/st0 [without any block size manipulation] gets the error.

To get the files off of the tape, I used 'toms root boot' disk [ http://www.toms.net/rb/ ] to boot the computer. It uses a 2.2 kernel I think, and a different tar program or tape driver. I'm not sure why it worked but it did.

• 1- use tape made with the HP in the IBM dds-4 drive.
• 2- mt -f /dev/st0 setblk 0
• 3- tar -xf -b 64 -f /dev/st0

works.

I can set the block size of the tape drive to 0 and use tar if the tape was originally made using my current ibm dds drive. I won't get the 'Cannot allocate memory' error.

Editor's note: see http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/linux_tape.html and http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/tapes.html#compat also.

See "Special Considerations" at Exabytes' "Integrating a Tape Drive into a Linux System"

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