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Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:01:32 -0600
From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>
To: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Jaime <jaime@snowmoon.com>
Subject: Re: Quantum tape drive
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On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 03:49:39PM -0600, Dan Nelson wrote:
> In the last episode (Jan 28), Jaime said:
> > 
> > Thanks.  Would this decrease the ability of other Unixes being able
> > to read the tape?  For example, using pax (which can read tar
> > archives) or GNU's tar?
> 
> It shouldn't.  At worst you may have to specify a matching blocksize
> argument when reading.

I once had problems with an SGI user writing tapes with megabyte block
size. Works on ancient SGI IRIX but nowhere else that I know of.

Worse, IRIX remembered the last block size used on a tape device, across
multiple users. Learned to always set block size when writing else no
telling how it would go.

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@HiWAAY.net
========================================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.