Donna Garverick writes:
> is there a way to get tar (or cpio, i guess) to be better behaved --
> that is more mpe-aware and less unix-y?

Well, they *are* Unix programs!  What do you expect?  ;-)

> i have an application
> that needs to use tar to create tapes to send to another company
> with a unix system.  it would be *so nice* to be able to issue
> a file equation and then say "tar...*tape...".  *not* being able
> to do this is creating much havoc with the operators.  they're
> not aware that a tape request is pending because all the lovely
> tools we have to help the operators are mpe only.  i don't
> believe this is an issue of running tar from the ci (vs. the shell).
> if i'm wrong and could stand some enlightening -- please do so :-)

I'm not sure I understand why your operators aren't aware of a pending tape
request from tar.  Here's what the console sees on my machine:

:console 207
CONSOLE HAS BEEN SWITCHED FROM LDEV 20 TO LDEV 207 .
:xeq tar.hpbin.sys 'cvf /dev/tape UDC'
?15:33/#S2010/1133/IS "TAPE" ON LDEV#7 (Y/N)?

PS: For those who don't know, /dev/tape is created via mknod /dev/tape c 0 7.
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
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"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)