As a Lurking AIX-er, let me make the following comments:

1.      Don't use compression when making the tape, either in
        software or in hardware.

2.      Under AIX, there is an option -B to automatically write in chunks
        of 20 512b blocks.  Perhaps there is one on the HP?

3.      I don't know about specifying tape density or blocking on HP, but
        I know that it matters under AIX.  On the AIX side, have the users
        run  'tcopy   /dev/rmtX'  to see if the tape is readable at all.
        If so, it'll outline the blocks and block sizes on the screen.  It's
        possible the AIX side must set the block size to '0' on their tape
        drive.  Or '512,' or '1024.'

4.      Could you feed the output of tar to

                dd of=[tape drive] bs=512

                                                ... ?  This may make it a
little
        easier to read the tape.

If any one of these works, remember to NOT change things from there!  ;-)

--------------------
Bruce T. Harvey ,  Special Projects
410.403.2390 (vox) .............. 410.329.1114 (fax)
http://www.routescape.com,  [log in to unmask]
http://www.geocities.com/athens/acropolis/5292 ,  [log in to unmask]
Insight Distribution Systems - 222 Schilling Circle - Hunt Valley, MD  21031

-----Original Message-----
From: Debus, David [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 5:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: TAR and Unix/AIX


Greetings Listers,

A little TAR assistance is needed. I 'TARed' 9 ASCII files of varying size
into
a single compressed archive file and then put that file to tape also using
TAR.
This tape is going to a AIX machine and these are the errors I received from
the vendor.


Mon Nov 27 15:55:11 2000
Maximum block size scanned for is 64K
Tape density Uncompressed Data DDS-2

2-0 ARCHIVE Python 04106-X (DAT)
  **medium error on read**
Medium error
<<End of tape>>

** End of scan **
Total Bytes : 0


Read retries : 30
Read soft errors : 30
Read corrected : 0

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

TIA


Dave Debus
HP Systems Manager
ARAMARK Educational Resources, Inc