Re: dd hangs when attempting to access a tape drive

[Curt Blank]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> It sounds like a problem with an underlying driver.
> I'm doubt it's worth trying to work around in dd.  Besides,
> what can dd do?  If you request a block size of 32, it can't
> very well opt to use 512 because using 32 might make hang a
> buggy driver.

Yeah I agree, doesn't seem worth the effort and second guessing what 
really to do would be tough. Like I said, just curious if you had some 
magical way to do it.

> Did you try specifying just the *output* block size?
> E.g., rather than using bs=32 (which sets both input and output
> block sizes), specify only obs=32.

No not before, I did see suggestions to trying ibs and obs but got side 
tracked in getting the perl script and C program working. I just tried it:

dd if=dev/nst0 obs=32

and it wrote out the full 512 bytes to stdout. I tried:

dd if=dev/nst0 of=e.e obs=32

just in case it had something to do with stdout and it wrote the full 
512 bytes to e.e too.