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From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu>
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To: kris@obsecurity.org (Kris Kennaway)
Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 19:55:44 -0400 (EDT)
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cc: Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
Subject: Re: Transferring dump file to tape?
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> 
> > But, even doing that doesn't fix the problem we often see with
> > writes to tape failing in that manner.=20
> >=20
> > dd itself is reliable.   It is tried and true.   I think our
> > failures come from something in the sa driver because a drive
> > that fails usually fails for everything except maybe tar and dump.
> 
> Are you absolutely certain that the tape device is not in use at the
> time that the application receives the error?

Yes.  It can even happen in single user.   So far I have only had the
problem with various levels of DAT tapes.  It has never failed that way 
with DLTs.

////jerry

> 
> Kris
>