GNU Tar question

[Rowley, David]

First posting to this list.  Couldn't find a list for questions about gnu tar.  If this is the wrong forum for this question, please let me know.

 

We tried to write a 48-GB gzipped file to a DLT7000 drive using gnutar on our Sun E450 running Solaris 2.6.  The file was too large to fit on one DLT tape so we used the following command so it would span tapes:

 

/usr/local/bin/tar --multi-volume -cvf /dev/rmt/1 <filename>.gz

 

When the operation had been running for about three hours, we got the following error message:

 

/usr/local/bin/tar: WARNING: Cannot close /dev/rmt/1 (3, -1): I/O error

Prepare volume #2 for /dev/rmt/1 and hit return:

/usr/local/bin/tar: Cannot open /dev/rmt/1: I/O error

 

In our /var/adm/messages file, we got "Sense Key: Volume Overflow" messages at this time.

 

 

After we put in another tape, the error messages stopped and it appeared that the tar command must have started writing to the tape again.  We waited for another 3 hours or so, then concluded that the tar command must not be working correctly.  It should have finished quickly with the second tape, since the file was only 48 GB.  40 GB should have fit on tape one and just 8 GB more on tape two.

 

We stopped the tar at this time.

 

Here are my questions:

 

1. Why did we get error messages?

2. Is there a size limit to gnutar files?

3. Is our tar command correct?  Are there other options we should use, maybe the "--tape-length" option?

4. Are there any bugs we should know about?

5. Does the fact that the file was gzipped have any impact?  Should we have used the uncompressed file and then used hardware compression?

 

 

Any answers would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

Dave

 

David Rowley

Unix Systems Administrator

Seisint, Inc.
6601 Park of Commerce Blvd.
Boca Raton, Florida 33487 
address@hidden

Direct 561.999.3986

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