[ale] 4mm problem.

[David St.Romain]

On Wed, 20 Nov 1996, Robert L. Harris wrote:

> Got a good one for you guru's...
> 
> I just left my old company.  Before I left I backed up my home dir on a
> 4mm drive from a SGI Indy.
> 
> I have a 4mm at home on my PC and want to recover the data.  When I do a
> "dd conv=swab if=/dev/st0 | tar -xvf - <filename>"   I get an "Incorrect
> Block Size".  Anyone have any clues as to how to remedy this?  I tried
> setting ibs to different values but that is either wrong or I couldn't
> get the right value.


Try this.  You will need a copy of mt-st which is for scsi tape.  You can 
check the current block size setting with

gumbo:~# mt-st status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=-1, block number=-1, partition=0.
Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x13 (DDS (61000 bpi)).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (1010000):
 ONLINE IM_REP_EN
gumbo:~# 

which shows mine at 512.  Now use

gumbo:~# mt-st setblk 0
gumbo:~#

to set the block size to variable and then the 'mt-st status' should 
indicate a 0 block size.  Now try the tar again.

David


stromain at tsg001.hboc.com
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