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Re: Tape question
Hello everyone,
I have a SCSI tape drive attached to a Linux machine. It is defined as
/dev/st0. /dev/tape and /dev/rmt0 are both symbolic links to /dev/st0.
If I log into the system as root, everything is fine. Tape programs (mt,
tar) point to /dev/st0 by default.
If I log as a regular user, funny things start to happen. mt still points
to /dev/st0, however tar does not. Moreover, behavior of tar depends on a
user default shell, at least it seems so. Here are examples:
User 1, default shell /bin/tcsh.
>tar -t
tar: can't open /dev/nst0 : Permission denied
User 2, default shell /bin/bash.
$tar -t
tar: can't open /dev/nftape : Permission denied
Both /dev/nst0 and dev/nftape exist, and the latter is a symbolic link to
/dev/nrft0
So my questions are:
1. Where does tar get its default tape name? Why is it different for
different login names and/or shells?
2. Is there a way to tell tar once and for all what its default tape is? I
tried to create a file /etc/default/tar (like you do under Solaris) with
default tar tape names, but apparently it does not work under Linux. Yes
of course I can write tar `-tf /dev/st0' but this is not my question.
3. Is it safe to delete devices /dev/nst0 and /dev/nrft0 and create them
anew as links to /dev/st0? A problem may arise if there are other
programs that use these device names.
Thanks,
Andy
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* Andrey Tsouladze * *
* Webmaster/Systems Manager * *
* SPL WorldGroup * Cogito, *
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