Hello, I've got a tape drive for backups, and for a long time I was absolutely unable to store more than a singe archive per tape. Stop smiling, that's not funny.
Eventually and accidentally, I found out about rewinding and non-rewinding device files, the information being hidden deep in the tar info file. For all who don't know it: > Most tape devices have two entries in the `/dev' directory, > [... /dev/tape, /dev/ntape ...] The simpler name is the > _rewinding_ version of the device, while the name having `nr' in it is > the _no rewinding_ version of the same device. > > A rewinding tape device will bring back the tape to its beginning > point automatically when this device is opened or closed. So 'mt -f /dev/tape fsf 1' will first bring the tape to the beginning of the second file, but once the command is finished the tape will rewind. Smart move. I don't usually use info, and from the occasional man-vs-info flamewar on this list I know I'm not alone. Furthermore, I'd never have looked for this in the tar documentation. Or do I use tar to fast-forward the tape? All I knew to start with was that 'mt eom' apparently didn't work as advertised. IMO, the (non-)rewinding device issue should be mentioned in the mt manpage. But does this omission really justify a bug report? Or is it just me? While I'm at it, one more thing I don't understand -- mt comes with the cpio package, and there's another package mt-st one may install. I don't notice any significant difference between the two, so where's the point? Under what circumstances would I want or prefer mt-st over mt? cu, Schnobs -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
