On 12/27/2010 11:40 AM, [email protected] wrote: > I used to make one whole archive at once, backuping whole folder, but it > tends to be problematic when some tape becomes bad (I have to make whole > archive again than). > > So now I backup files in the folder alphabetically from A to Z (and numbers > first) because I can append from previous good record not having to start > from beginning with tens of GB. I started with some older tar version from > Ubuntu repository (1.20 or so) and: > > sudo tar -cMf /dev/st0 some_path/1* > > Then continued with letters up to G. It stucked with our error so I tried > again: > > sudo tar -cMf /dev/st0 some_path/G* > > from last record. Still the same problem. Than I tried files starting with H, > it took IIRC another one or two tapes (which worked fine so definitelly not > tape problem). After it I tried G again with no success. Upgraded to latest > Ubuntu repository tar (1.21 I think), nothing, than manually installed latest > tar from source and discovered which file is problematic, still not able to > append this single one.
This makes it sound like it's not connected to the -r option at all, which is a surprise. When you write "from last record", what does that mean? Does it mean that you executed this command: sudo tar -cMf /dev/st0 some_path/G* with an already-rewound tape, or that you did it without rewinding the tape, or what? How many times did it ask for a new tape before it failed? How long was the tape? What file did it fail on, and what does "ls -l" say for that file? Also, what is the output of the following command? env | grep TAR
