How to put several files on 1 tape

[John F. Haugh II]

In article <755 at leah.Albany.Edu> rds95 at leah.Albany.Edu (Robert Seals) writes:
>Here's one... either I'm being real stupid (probably) or something
>is strangly missing in Unix tape facilites (gosh).
>
>I want to put several files on a tape, each separated with file marks.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------
>|BOT|  file1    |FM|  file2    |FM| .....       |EOT|
>---------------------------------------------------------

you need to use the no-rewind on close device.  you create the first
file using whatever, cp or cat works just fine.  then, after you have
copied the first file, then the tape is closed, you will have a file
with a EOT mark after it.  opening the tape again and copying another
file, without rewind the tape first, should produce a tape with two
files separated by a file mark and ending with an EOT mark.

file marks and EOT marks are just collections of tape marks.  one tape
mark separates a block from the next one.  two tape marks, which produces
a zero lenght block, and in the unix idiom the eof of file, is a file
mark.  three tape marks gives you the EOT mark.

- john.
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