Re: [Bug-tar] Reading out the label (and _only_ the label)

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 09:49:45PM +0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> Hi Wouter,
> 
> > Unfortunately, the only non-destructive actions that I've found that
> > will make tar read out the label and/or exit with a status code if the
> > label isn't what I'm giving it, involve reading out the entire archive
> > from tape. Since these tapes are rather large and I'm not sure I'll
> > find the right label first time around, I'd rather avoid this if at
> > all possible.
> 
> Can't you use dd(1) to read only a little bit of the tar file and feed
> that to tar?
> 
>     dd if=/dev/st0 bs=1k count=20 | tar tvf - | ...test label

Sure; I just wanted to be sure the feature doesn't exist before I
started using workarounds like this one (it would also make sense that
there was such a feature, especially in cases like rmt or so)

-- 
Wouter Verhelst
NixSys BVBA
Louizastraat 14, 2800 Mechelen
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