[ILUG] tar question

[conor at discuskeeping.com]

Quoting Damien Gill <Damieng at QUALCOM.IE>:

> Tar -cvf /dev/st1 ../internal.data

> Now he needs to take the info back off the tape to a different directory
> when he runs the command
>
> Tar -xvf /dev/st1
>
> He gets an error (not sure if this is exact) tar:../internal.data member
> name contains ,..,

Likely because the device is not ready. Since you have more than one tape
device, I assume that this is either a library or autoloader. The principal is
the same so....

example:
# tapeinfo -f /dev/sg0(123456789) etc etc until you identify the robot arm))
Lets say its on /dev/sg15 as is common on SAN attached devices. Could 
be sg2 if
its SCSI attached. Suck em and see.

# mtx -f /dev/sg15 status
This will show you all the tape devices, and show you whats in the 
library. Lets
say a tape is in slot 1

# mtx -f /dev/sg15 load 1 0

Now the device is presented to the OS as a SCSI tape device and therefore
accessible at /dev/st0 /dev/st1 etc depending.

Now try your tar:

# tar -cvf /dev/st0 /path-to-directory

If its simply two standalone devices then just use the mt-st package & try
tarring with the full path to the device.

Check dmesg aswell for errors which may not be showing up on the console.

> Damien.

Regards
Conor.