My Exabyte has a personality! It hates cp! HELP!!

[Dean Brooks]

   We just recently acquired an Exabyte 2.3 gig tape drive for our
Motorola SYS V.3.2 (V/88) 8864 system, and I have noticed something
unusual.

   If I do the following to place a file on to the tape:

$ cp /tmp/BIGFILE /dev/exabyte

   And then immediately do the following to extract it again:

$ cp /dev/exabyte /tmp/newfile

   The two files will have different lengths, varying anywhere from
1,000 bytes difference to 38,400 bytes difference.  *However*, if I
use "cpio" to backup the file and then restore it, it works perfectly.

I have tried this test over and over with different files, and it *never*
works with the "cp" or "cat" command, but *always* works with cpio.

Is there a problem with "cat" or "cp" not doing an fflush or something
ignorant like that?  By the way, the /dev/exabyte file is a character
based device, not a block based device.

Any clues?

--
dean at coplex.uucp (Dean Brooks)
Copper Electronics, Inc.
Louisville, Kentucky