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Old 12-23-2008, 07:35 AM   #1
aimed
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Tape device, id mt eof necessary


Hi!

I bought this DDS2 tape device and I'm now working on my backup script and I begun to wonder is "mt eof" absolutely necessary after every tar? Or what's the use of "mt eof"

example.
tape rewinded, erased and ready to roll
$ tar cv testdir1
$ tar cv testdir2
$ tar cv testdir3

mt status tells that file number is three. Good. I rewind the tape and let's say I want to restore testdir2.

$ mt fsf
$ mkdir restore; cd restore
$ tar xv

And we're done. Now if I have created "eof"'s after every tar I should have forward the tape using "mt fsf 2" command before "tar xv". That's not big thing but what's the point of "eof" in the first place?
 
Old 12-23-2008, 09:25 AM   #2
trickykid
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You really only need to use eof to mark the end of each tape archive or tar in order to have multiple tar archives on a single tape. It's good practice.
 
Old 12-23-2008, 01:52 PM   #3
aimed
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To make sure I'm on the same line with you with this. By tape archive you mean the whole tape and tar archive is what I did in my example?
 
Old 12-23-2008, 02:25 PM   #4
trickykid
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aimed View Post
To make sure I'm on the same line with you with this. By tape archive you mean the whole tape and tar archive is what I did in my example?
TAR = Tape ARchive

That's what tar stands for. That's what I meant by my previous post. Just the tar, not whole tape.
 
Old 12-24-2008, 06:51 AM   #5
aimed
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All right! Thanks!
 
  


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