Tape drives and protection of tapes (using tar)

[rznowski at psuvax1.UUCP]

     Recently a problem has arisen, and we are looking for solutions.

     The problem is as follows:
	
	There are two users, user T with a tape and user N - no tape.

	User T has a tape mounted with 100 files and is going to add
	another file onto the end of the tape.  He uses the command
	"tar r file101".  After this command has executed, the tape
	will still be mounted and online.

	User N types the command "tar cv tarout myfile". (command
	should be "tar cvf tarout myfile")  The output of tar will
	be: "tar: tarout: no such file or directory".  HOWEVER,
	the tape belonging to user T will have been erased and only
	one file will be there (namely myfile).
     
     As you can see, alot of information has been lost by user T,
     perhaps it cannot be recovered.  The reason that we have
     run into this problem, is that we have just added many new
     users who are just learning about the system, and now many
     more people are using tapes as offline storage.

     Please reply to either:

       Mark Starner		starner at psuvax1
       Stephen Roznowski	rznowski at psuvax1
-- 

			Stephen J. Roznowski
			Pennsylvania State University
			{allegra, akgua, ihnp4}!psuvax1!rznowski