tar on vms

[Robert_Toxen%anvil.UUCP at harvard.harvard.edu]

> From: Simon Kenyon <anvil!harvard!mcvax!simon>
> Newsgroups: net.sources
> Subject: wanted:program to read tar tapes on a vms machine
> Message-Id: <970 at mcvax.UUCP>
> 
> [for the line eater]
> does anyone have the above mentioned beastie
> preferably not in c, but i can translate if thats all there is
> i have a sun workstation which i want to get stuff onto from mag tape
> the only tape drive i have is on a vax running vms
> 	Simon Kenyon
> 	The National Software Centre
> 	28 Enterprise Centre
> 	Pearse Street
> 	Dublin 2
> 	IRELAND
> 	+353-1-716255
> 	...!seismo!mcvax!einode!simon

There is a simpler solution:
1. Determine the tar blocking factor of your tape (the -b flag). This is
   probably 20 or 1.

2. Multiply the blocking factor by 512 (the size of a tar block). The
   result is the number of bytes per tape block. With a blocking factor of
   20 this is 10240 bytes/block.

3. Use some VMS utility to read the tape into a disk file.

4. Copy the disk file to the Sun (UNIX) system by any means. If you can
   transfer the de-tar'ed file, I assume you can transfer the raw file
   (which is a binary file).

5. On the Sun use tar to extract the data, using the -f flag to specify
   the raw file transfered from VMS. If the raw file is "foo", do:

	tar -xvf foo

Using uucp or ethernet to transfer tar files is also popular.

Bob Toxen
Stratus
{ucbvax!ihnp4,harvard}!anvil