mitchell@turing.chem.uh.edu (Mike Mitchell) (09/05/90)
I'm having a similar problem with Tar on the 8mm Exabyte drive. I use the verbose mode of Tar after using mt to get to the end of a tape, every thing looks good on the screen i.e. files are added to the tape, etc. But when I'm done, often nothing has been written to the tape. I've been told that there is a screw-up in the time-outs for different operating system processes or at least a mis-match in time-out lengths. It seems that when the load average is greater than the number of processors (roughly) that the system starts screwing up. Supposedly 3.3.1 to be released in mid September (I'm told) will fix this problem. Till then I keep duplicate tapes and cuss a lot. Mike Mitchell Department of Chemistry University of Houston mitchell@uhrcc2.crcc.uh.edu