[CLUE-Tech] Help w/SCSI tape problem?

[Carl Gibbons]

   I can see the tape drive and tape:

$ sudo mt -f /dev/nst0 status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x8c (EXB-8505 compressed).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
 BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN

   I can write to the tape, but I get an error:

$ sudo dd bs=512 if=liquidwar-5.5.9-1.i386.rpm of=/dev/nst0
dd: writing `/dev/nst0': Invalid argument
3397+1 records in
3397+0 records out

   I can try to read what I wrote to the tape:

$ sudo mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind
$ sudo dd bs=512 if=/dev/nst0 of=image
3397+0 records in
3397+0 records out

   But what I read back isn't the same size as what I wrote:

$ ls -l
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1739264 Apr 25 15:55 image
-rw-------    1 johndoe  johndoe   1739593 Apr 24 15:08 liquidwar-5.5.9-1.i386.rpm

   Why is this happening? How do I fix this problem?

-- Carl Gibbons, cgibbons at du.edu