[ale] 8mm Sun Tar on tape

[ctjones at dankaoi.com (Tim Jones)]

David,
I had a similar problem at one time.  A kind soul sent me the following
explanation and solution.  It worked for me, so hopefully it will work
for you.
----------------------------------------------
By default Linux assumes a Fixed Block Size for 8mm Tapes, therefore to
exchange tapes with SunOS I issue the following command so the ExaByte
Drive can read Variable Sized Blocks: 

     mt -f /dev/nst1 setblk 0

You may still have problems between GNU Tar and the SunOS Tar, but
atleast
the I/O Error should be licked!

---------------------------------
David Hamm wrote:
> 
> I have an 8mm tape that is supposed to be a tar from a Sun system.  When I run
> "mt -f /dev/st1 status" it tells me that the block size is 1024 so I use the
> following command to read the tap, "tar -b 2 -tf /dev/st1" but I still get a
> tape read error.  Any suggestions?
> 
> ------         David Hamm - dhamm at itserve.com           --------