10-11-2012
I am not an Solaris expert, but the first error is most definitely a "tape full" error. In disks you have a fixed amount of space you know in advance. So the OS can keep track of the decreasing number of free space during a write operation and once this number hits zero it can tell you "disk full".
There is no such thing with a tape: a tape is of indefinite length (at least from the OS point of view) and therefore of indefinite capacity. For the running tar it is like this: it writes a piece of data, then further winds the tape, then writes the next piece, ... . At the end of the tape the tape drive will tell the OS (tar) that there is no more tape to wind - but for the OS this will be "unexpected", because it can't expect the end of tape like it could expect the exhaustion of disk space.
The second error more looks like a tape error: the magnetic coating of the tape might be damaged or the head of the drive might be dirty or nearing their end-of-life or whatever - the data haven't been written for some reason and it was the fault of something between the tape drive and the tape.
I hope this helps.
bakunin
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AMMT(8) System Manager's Manual AMMT(8)
NAME
ammt - Amanda version of mt
SYNOPSIS
ammt [ -d ] [ -f|-t device ] command [ count ]
DESCRIPTION
Ammt provides just enough of the standard mt command for the needs of Amanda. This is handy when doing a full restore and the standard mt
program has not yet been found.
Ammt also provides access to the Amanda output drivers that support various tape simulations.
See the amanda(8) man page for more details about Amanda. See the OUTPUT DRIVERS section of amanda(8) for more information on the Amanda
output drivers.
OPTIONS
-d Turn on debugging output.
-f device
Access tape device device. If not specified, the TAPE environment variable is used.
-t device
Same as -f.
command count
Which command to issue, and an optional count of operations.
COMMANDS
Each command may be abbreviated to whatever length makes it unique.
eof|weof count
Write count (default: 1) end of file marks (tapemarks).
fsf count
Skip forward count (default: 1) files.
bsf count
Skip backward count (default: 1) files.
asf count
Position to file number count (default: 0) where zero is beginning of tape. This is the same as a rewind followed by a fsf count.
rewind Rewind to beginning of tape.
offline|rewoffl
Rewind to beginning of tape and unload the tape from the drive.
status Report status information about the drive. Which data reported, and what it means, depends on the underlying operating system, and
may include:
ONLINE Indicates the drive is online and ready.
OFFLINE
Indicates the drive is offline or not ready.
BOT Indicates the drive is at beginning of tape.
EOT Indicates the drive is at end of tape.
PROTECTED
Indicates the tape is write protected.
ds Device status.
er Error register.
fileno Current tape file number.
blkno Current tape block number file.
NOTE: many systems only report good data when a tape is in the drive and ready.
AUTHOR
Marc Mengel <mengel@fnal.gov>
John R. Jackson <jrj@purdue.edu>
SEE ALSO
amanda(8)
AMMT(8)