TAR: End of Tape Shown with tape not full and files left 2b backed up

[wrenvt97]

Why would the 'TAR: End of Tape' message appear when the tape is not full and there are files left to be backed up from the drive?

I issue a tar command like 'tar -cv /dev/rmt/0m /d03' the tape drive is recognized and begins to backup but may only get one or two files into a backup before the 'end of tape' message appears.

Could this be a corrupt or damaged tape?, I have tried several tapes and some work while other don't, but keep in mind these are brand new tapes.

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[gheist]

Have you erased tape before reuse - it still has old EOF/EOT marks on it.

mt [-f /dev/that/tape9] fsf - go a file further
... rewind - go to beginning
... offline - eject
... rewoffl - both
... erase - erase old content

 

[wrenvt97]

Thanks for the information. I looked up the mt command and successfully used it to rewind my tape; however, could not use the 'erase' option. I did a man on mt on my machine and the erase option was not present. As an FYI I'm using HP-UX.

Is there another way to erase the tape?

Also, wanted to let you know, I literally took these tapes directly out of a new box, removed the plastic wrap and inserted them into the tape drive, so nothing was on the tapes prior to my attempting to write to them. I'm using Hewlett Packard DDS-3 tapes. I have encountered this problem before and just inserted another new tape and re-tried the tar command, usually this works and the backup continues; however, now it seems I cannot use any tape. Could this be a problem with the drive?

 

[wrenvt97]

Just another note, could this be an issue with attempting to backup a specific file? What kinds of files would be the cause of this type of issue?

 

[gheist]

Yes - DDS is not eraseable nor should have hard to rewrite filemarks

man mt
may reveal another syntax to erase tape

or maybe you have inserted a cleaner cartrige or DDS3 media DAMAGED by DDS1 (it always erases media ID from any other DDS* and tears them sometimes) or a shorter test/diag tape???

 

[gheist]

blocksize should be as in documentation (mt status shows it)