Re: [Bug-tar] Problems restoring from multi-volume DLT tape archive

[Joerg Schilling]

Leonard Sitongia <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm testing writing a multi-volume Super DLT tape on Windows XP using 
> Cygwin's tar and reading those tapes on Linux using tar there.  The 
> writing seemed to go normally, and I was prompted for the second tape:
>
> $ tar -c -M -b 128 -f /dev/nst0 g/20050421/
> Prepare volume #2 for `/dev/nst0' and hit return:
> (loaded 2nd tape and hit return)
>
> When I was reading, the first tape read fine.  At the end of the tape, 
> it simply finished, there was no prompt for the second tape:
>
> # tar -xv -M -b 128 -f /dev/nst0
> 20050419/
> 20050419/20050419.111408.fts
> 20050419/20050419.111424.fts
> ...
> 20050420/20050420.180332.fts
> 20050420/20050420.180346.fts
> (just ended here, didn't ask for another tape, so I loaded second tape)
> address@hidden tape]# tar -xv -M -b 128 -f /dev/nst0
> 20050421/20050421.121910.fts
> tar: 20050421/20050421.121910.fts: Cannot extract -- file is continued 
> from another volume
> 20050421/20050421.121927.fts
> ...

The way, GNU tar tries to deal with multi volume archives does not always work
correctly. Under some conditions, the checks for consistency cannot be done.

You may try to unpack the archives with star:

ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/

as star does not check things that cannot be checked.

BTW: star uses a different method to split archives for multi volume support
and thus is always able to do a consistency check on star multi volume archives.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:address@hidden (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       address@hidden                (uni)  
       address@hidden     (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily