Summary: TAR Question

In keeping with the spirit of the list, I hereby offer the summary to my
question, and the ultimate resolution to the problem.  It was, on
reflection, a pretty lame question.

I had noted that I had two copies of tar on my Solaris system, the GNU
version and the Solaris version, and implied that this might be buggering
the archive process.

"Too many people to list" noted the differences, and some replied that my
problem was likely the drive itself.  Indeed the archive script specially
calls the gnu tar version, and was not the problem.

The archive finally ran last night.  I inserted the blank tape which had
been (attempted) to be written to on previous failed attempts.  Ran mt -f
/dev/nrst28 erase.  This chugged away for several hours.  Ran the archive
script.  Ran without a problem.  <shrug>.

Now, if someone can convince my mgt that using a Sparc Station 10 for a
primary file server is a bad idea . . .

Brian Dunbar