Server 1 - Sun Solaris 5.8 sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-480R with attached DLT tape drive /dev/rmt/0n
Server 2 - Old DG-UX box which has restore command on it compatible with the files on the backyup tape - backed up with dump2
Server 3 - Sun solaris 5.9 sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V490 with lots of free space to bring back files from backup tape.
Server 1 has run the command mt -f /dev/rmt/0n fsf 1 to move tape drive onto first dump on tape.
Server 3 has shared an area of disk space
Server 2 can get onto the shared space and from this working directory issues the command restore rf server2:/dev/rmt/0n
Getting permission denied error

Any ideas how to get around this?
Can't access the information on tape using ufsrestore or vxrestore as backup tape was created using dump2 (DG_UX)
Have .rhosts files on all servers with "servername root" for each server.

How is this server2 accessing the shared directory? Is it mounted via NFS? If it is, is the export from server3 done with write permissions for server2? Note that you will have to explicitly allow server2 to write to the exported filesystem.

I think you are on the right track "rmt" is "remote magnetic tape" and is normally called through "rsh" or similar. The .rhosts file should be the right approach, of course there are a number of permissions you need to check...

1. the permission to invoke rsh on the target host as the given user

2. the permission to access the tape

The first one can be tested by trying to run 'pwd', eg 'rsh -n server pwd'.

The second can be tested by login on to the box as the user the rsh will execute as and checking the rights of the magnetic tape, eg can you do

dd if=/dev/rmt/0n of=/dev/null

Hi blowtorch - I've logged onto server2 and can create a file on the shared folder so I think the permissions must be OK

"The first one can be tested by trying to run 'pwd', eg 'rsh -n server pwd'. "

We seem to have a problem here from server 2 as root I can rsh to Server3 but not Server1
However from Server3 I can rsh to both Server1 and Server2
/etc/hosts on each machine has entries for the others
/.rhosts on each server has entries for the other servers

What else would be controlling ability to rsh??