Tape I/O

[der Mouse]

In article <91155.144949JGROVER at MAINE.MAINE.EDU>, JGROVER at MAINE.MAINE.EDU (John Grover) writes:

> Here at the U of Maine, we (the computing center) receive Ultrix
> distributions from DEC which we then have to turn around and supply
> to others on campus.  Since we don't like to let the tapes out of our
> grubby mitts, we need to be able to copy from one tape to another
> and, of course, have the resulting tape usable by the recipient.
> Further, we would like to be able to copy from tapes of one type to
> another, and even to disk (so we might FTP to a non-local site.) I
> have been trying to do this using dd, but I have run into several
> snags, and don't feel comfortable about the results so far.  Are
> there tape utilities out there that will let me investigate what
> format a tape is in (dump? tar?) as well as block and record sizes.

You probably should look at copytape; it does almost exactly what
you're asking for.  The version I have has a header saying

	/*
	 * COPYTAPE.C
	 *
	 * This program duplicates magnetic tapes, preserving the
	 * blocking structure and placement of tape marks.
	 *
	 * This program was updated at
	 *
	 *      U.S. Army Artificial Intelligence Center
	 *      HQDA (Attn: DACS-DMA)
	 *      Pentagon
	 *      Washington, DC  20310-0200
	 *
	 *      Phone: (202) 694-6900
	 *
	 **************************************************
	 *
	 *      THIS PROGRAM IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
	 *
	 **************************************************
	 *
	 * July 1986            David S. Hayes
	 *              Made data file format human-readable.
	 *
	 * April 1985           David S. Hayes
	 *              Original Version.
	 */

I don't know where it can be obtained from; if I wanted an up-to-date
copy I'd ask archie.

					der Mouse

			old: mcgill-vision!mouse
			new: mouse at larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu