tar: write error: unexpected EOF

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi friends,

I am using Sun Solaris 5.9. I want to take backup of 3 folders which are 50 GB in size totally using tar command on tapes. I am having DAT 72 tape. After initiating tar command (tar -cvf /dev/rmt/0n /tmp/dir1/ /tmp/dir2/ /tmp/dir3/), tarring is stopped after 10 hrs (approx) and i am getting an error like
"tar: write error: unexpected EOF".

Can anyone help me on this. Thanks in adv.

br///
Vijay.

2

I found one option "c" for compressing.. the command is tar cvf /dev/rmt/0c /tmp/dir1

but even though it is not compressing. any one can help .. pls .. urgent..

3

Ok, I have no way to test this, but I would try something like this:

tar -vf - /tmp/dir1/ /tmp/dir2/ /tmp/dir3/ | gzip -c | tar -vf /dev/rmt/0n -

I am trying to tar the directories to stdout | then compress (hope you have gzip) | and then try tar'ing the resulting gzip file.

I cannot believe a utility like tar having compression will be as good as gzip's.

If you get really desparate, you could change to gzip -c9 to do a tighter compression, at the expense of time.

4

Read the tar man page. Then is no such thing as a 'option "c" for compressing'.

And also notice:

And 50GB counts as "larger".

5

Hi,

Thanks for your valuable reply.

I am sorry, previously i didn't mentioned clearly. By using this tape options /dev/rmt/0c , it is mentioned that files can be compressed (c option). but it is not working. I found in a website.

6

Oh. That c in the device name of the tape drive requests hardware compression. Some tape drives have compession built-in and this is how you use it. But most tape drives do not have this type of comression.

7

Can you tell me how to identify whether the tape drive support built-in compression or not? :slight_smile:

8

Read the documentation for the tape drive in question.