problems with tar and Xenix 286 2.2.3

[Mark Seiffert]

Well the only two responses I have received were to point out a typeing
error I made when keying this into my system and playing with his by
modem. Here is a corrected repost.

In article <1281 at mgse.UUCP> marks at mgse.UUCP (Mark Seiffert) writes:
I am trying to help a friend who purchased SCO Xenix 2.2.3 and has
not been using it much. He has had a number of system crashes and
feels this may be part of the problem, but I don't know.

He is having problems with tar and floppy devices, replacing tar
from the distribution N1 diskette does not help. in /etc/default/tar
entry 0 reads;

archive0=/dev/rfd096ds15        10      1200    n

There is now default entry. when you place a freshly formatted
high-density diskette in drive A: and type 'tar -cv0 *', tar will
list off the files it is archiving, when you then type 'tar -tv0',
tar returns without printing the filenames of the files backed up
and without printing a blocking a block size or an error message.
when you do a 'hd /dev/fd096ds15' hd shows that what was written
as actually all 0xFF instead of the data, after the 0xFFs comes
0xF6 from the disk format.

When I tar files to the disk using 'tar -cvf /dev/fd096ds15' tar
prints the names of the files it is archiving normally, when I type
'tar -tvf /dev/fd096ds15'  the disk table is printed out like it
should be, and using hd I see that the data is indeed there, however
if I do a 'tar -tv0' on the disk which just listed fine with the
longer command, tar returns at once with no printout of any kind.

'tar -cvf filename.tar *' and 'tar -tvf filename.tar' work correctly,
as do 'tar -cv9 *' and 'tar -cv9', where archive9=tarfile.

So far the problem only seems to occur if the tar file is a character
special file, and only if you use the numeric entry for a device
from /etc/default/tar.

At least we were able to find a way to get it to work, but it would
seem that SCO put /etc/default/tar there to make peoples lives easier,
do you know of any reason it is not?


Mark Seiffert,  Metairie, LA.  rex!mgse!marks