Appending to archive tape

[Jonathan I. Kamens]

  Well, I don't know about the particular architecture you're working on, but
under for versions of Unix, most tape-like devices have a corresponding
non-rewinding device that doesn't rewind when it's closed (you didn't mention
this in your posting, so I don't know whether or not you know about it).

  For example, one of our machines has an exabyte tape drive hooked up to it
as /dev/mt0.  The raw device name is /dev/rmt0.  And the non-rewinding device
is /dev/nrmt0.  Last night, I wrote a tape that contained a label at the
beginning and then a tar archive.  I used:

	mt -f /dev/rmt0 rewind 
	dd if=/tmp/label of=/dev/nrmt0
	tar cvf - [files I was saving] | dd of=/dev/nrmt0
	mt -f /dev/rmt0 rewind

So, if the device you're using has a corresponding non-rewinding device, you
can use that.

  Hope this helps.

-- 
Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
MIT Project Athena				11 Ashford Terrace
jik at Athena.MIT.EDU				Allston, MA  02134
Office: 617-253-8495			      Home: 617-782-0710