OSF 3.2g dump says the tape has -39000 feet left

From: Clayton Burton <Clayton.Burton_at_furman.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 15:27:46 -0400

Dearest admins,

Currently our backups are done using `tar`.
I'm trying to start using `dump` instead b/c it's so much quicker to
restore a file using `dump`/`restore`.

After using `dump` to backup a filesystem about of 7737 megs to a 120 meter
tape in a DEC TLZ09 tape drive, a few unusual summary comments are made by
`dump`.

This is the dump command I used:
"
/usr/sbin/dump -0u -L "19980819" -b 32 -f /dev/rmt0m /usr/datatel
"

This is the summary messages that are so unusual:
"
dump: Actual: 7919170 tape blocks on 1 volume(s)
dump: Feet remaining on tape: -18057
dump: Volumes used: 1
dump: Rewinding and unloading tape
dump: Unmount last tape
dump: Level 0 dump on Wed Aug 19 10:53:17 1998 EDT
dump: Dump completed at Wed Aug 19 12:11:46 1998 EDT
"

One of these comments seems to tell how many unused feet are left on the
tape.
According to `dump`, there are 18057 feet left! Yes, NEGATIVE 39000 feet
left!

I thought perhaps that dask was someone's bad idea of a seperator, so I
backed up a much smaller partition, and NO dash.
Here's the output of the smaller dump:
"
dump: Actual: 51405 tape blocks on 1 volume(s)
dump: Feet remaining on tape: 2168
dump: Volumes used: 1
dump: Rewinding and unloading tape
dump: Unmount last tape
dump: Level 0 dump on Wed Aug 19 13:21:49 1998 EDT
dump: Dump completed at Wed Aug 19 13:23:14 1998 EDT
"

Other than that wierd "feet remaining" message, the backup seems to be
fine, but I don't have enough disk space to actually restore that entire
filesys and compare it to the original.

When I use the same `dump` command to send to the NON-compressed tape
device (/dev/rmt0a intead of /dev/rmt0m), I do indeed get messages from
dump demanding attention and another tape! This shows that `dump` really
did run out of space on the tape and really did complain about it.

My only question is: Is there any way I can verify this backup as being
good or bad?
Received on Wed Aug 19 1998 - 19:23:30 NZST

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