Re: [Bug-tar] Possible tar bug

[Paul Eggert]

Well, I have to admit, I'm at a loss as to why you're
experiencing the bug.  Perhaps if you run 'tar' under
GDB you can see why it thinks the tar file is ustar format
rather than GNU format.  I expect that it's some unanticipated
confusion between -r (which needs to guess the tar format from
the existing tape) and -M (which allows for multiple tapes,
some of which may be of different formats!).

One thing that strikes me is this one:

sudo tar -rMf /dev/st0 /path/G* (tape 7, 8)

Was tape 8 initialized before this tar -rM command was run
the first time?  It could be that you need to initialize
the trailing tapes as well.