Hi,

OS: Solaris9, SPARC.

Commands (and their outputs) that I use to backup two files of size 4GB and 10GB (respectively) are shown below:

# cd /backup/daily/
# mt -f /dev/rmt/0m rew
# tar -cvf /dev/rmt/0m *
a Mails.bkf 4680454 tape blocks
a backup.bkf too large to archive
#

The Tape is: HP DDS-4 data cartridge C5718A (40GB)

Why is this happening? If this is because the tape is full, then how do I start from the beginning (instead of appending data).

Regards,
M...

First off, you ARE starting from the begining of the tape by using the command mt -f /dev/rmt/0m rew. Check out the man page for mt. Since you probably use this command every day, you would not be appending to the tape at all (if the tar command had worked).

Second - check out this thread on compression.

Third, take a look at the E option for tar - part of it is for supporting file sizes greater than 8GB.

But see Error tar'ing files to tape. A tar archive, created with Sun's tar program is limited to 8,589,934,591 bytes. More tapes won't help. Try another program.

The problem should be the size. What other inbuilt tools are there for tape backup, Perderabo?

And from RTM's suggestion: 'E' option seems to solve it...

Command now gets modified to tar -cvfE /dev/rmt/0m *

# tar -cvfE /dev/rmt/0m *
a Mails.bkf 4680454 tape blocks
a backup.bkf 18116128 tape blocks
#

Thanks both-of-u.