Having installed Debian 7.8, I need to get something
from my backup DVD
what on earth is wrong?

You appear to have a compressed file of your backup, 2014-09-01.tar.bz2, so either uncompress it or use the same tool you built it with to extract the files you want. (See man bzip2)(bunzip2 --help at the command line for a quick reference.)
(bunzip2 -d 2014-09-01.tar.bz2 should uncompress your backup in the directory you are in.)

Edit: Then use tar to extract individual files, or all files, (tar -xfv 2014-09-01.tar). (See man tar)

Hi there,

I thought along the same line for a moment. But then I reconsidered it and couldn't explain why cp should bother about the type and contents of a file. Obviously, the file being copied is 2014-09-01.tar.bz2, and the first message line tells me that the file isn't readable. For me, that looks like a corrupt CD/DVD, which isn't all that unusual.

However, I'm a bit confused about the second message line failed to extend '/user/2014-09-01.tar.bz2', which suggests that cp tried to modify (extend) the file in some way - though it was only specified as the source!

Very strange.

[X] Doc CPU

It's definitely input/output error.

I think what the error message means is that cp copied some data but can't copy/extend the rest.

If cdrom is bad if you have skill try cleaning the lens or ask for service.

You can clean the cd/dvd with a soft cloth made wet by distilled water in spiral fashion from inward to outward. After that let it dry so that moisture is not present.
Then see if it works.

You should read cd faq from web.

Hi there,

yes, you're right, the second message is about the target file. I should've seen it - after all, I even quoted the message refering to the /user directory! ;-)

So the first message means the source file can't be read, and the second means the target file cannot be completed as a consequence.

I guess a bad media is more likely than a bad drive.

[X] Doc CPU

I'm trying to recover ~/.skype.
I agree that media is possibly the cause. *BUT* not 6 different dvds!
And since I have 100s of backup dvds that have .skye on them, I think that
6 is a fair sample.
There is something more profound involved.

there can be some related messages in /var/log

Where in /var/log?
What I do (or rather what cron does) is - - -
1) copy /home to an external drive
2) tar the directory
3) bunzip2 the image
then I burn the image to dvd with k3b

At the moment I have 2 concerns
1) I can't recover .skype
2) all my back up dvds seem to be useless.

All of this was done using MEPIS (latest was wheezy derived)
now 2 years old.

usually in /var/log/messages, but can be configured.... But you can easily check if something was written at the time of i/o error
you can try another drive too.

Still got problemss recovering a backup dvd
The Errno = 5. (and not errno.h)

I went back 4 years to find a dvd that worked - thats another 6 I've tried.
I have dvds of movies older than this which still play, so why is Debian 7.8
taking such an offence to my backup data. The ones I tried were .gz
tar files: the one I found to work was simply a tar image.

was that disk/file readable at all?

What I noticed was the drive was mounted, but appeared to be empty.
So I rebooted. Then found GRUB in a mess. So after I recovered
GRUB I found gparted showed the drive as unrecognisable. After
install gpart (what ran for some hours) it siad there were
file systems on the drive. Hence I reformatted it.