Fellow Gurus - 
Earlier today I posted:
==>  
==>  Dear Fellow Admins - 
==>  
==>  On 8 April, Penny Champin posted the following summary to her question.
==>  
==>  
==>  Needless to say, this makes it hard to do my backups since the 8mm is the 
==>  only tape drive I have.  Has anyone else run into this problem and fixed 
==>  it?
==>  
==>  ----- Begin Included Message -----
==>  
==>  >From alpha-osf-managers-owner-klarsen=enterprise.afit.af.mil_at_sws1.ctd.ornl.gov Wed Apr  8 17:22:50 1998
==>  
==>  Thanks to Bob G.
==>  
==>  After deleting the rmt devices and adding them back in, the problem
==>  was fixed.  I was using the wrong special files.
==>  
==>  Original question.
==>  >My system, DEC 3000/400, was upgraded from osf 1.3 to 4.0d and I've
==>  >applied the 4.0d patch and rebuilt the kernel.  When I list the patches,
==>  >Patch 0008.01 dump command correction is listed, but I'm still getting the
==>  >error:
==>  >The available blocks(6956), is less than the estimated blocks(1275369)
==>  >message when I try to do a dump.  I'm using the following command.
==>  >
==>  >/usr/sbin/dump 0uf /dev/nrmt5h /usr1
==>  >
==>  >Is there something else I need to do?
==>  >
==>  >Penny
==>  >p.a.champine_at_larc.nasa.gov
==>  
==>  ----- End Included Message -----
==>  
==>  I am receiving the same message about a tape drive on another machine.  
==>  Needless to say, deleting and recreating the tape device will not help 
==>  me.  I am trying to use rdump to backup my 4.0 secure NIS server to an 
==>  8mm exabyte tape drive on a SunOS Sparc 2 running 4.1.3.  I receive the 
==>  following error.
==>  
==>  rdump: Date of this level 0 dump: Tue May 12 09:10:47 1998 EDT
==>  rdump: Date of last level 0 dump: the start of the epoch 
==>  rdump: Dumping /dev/rrz2g (/patran_tmp) to /dev/nrst8 on host jefferson.afit.af.mil
==>  rdump: Mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
==>  rdump: Mapping (Pass II) [directories]
==>  rdump: Remote system is not known to be compatible for magtape functions, output being treated as regular file
==>  rdump: Estimate: 2077204 tape blocks on disk
==>  
==>  The available blocks(112148),is less than the estimated blocks(2077204)
==>      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
==>  
==>  Dump is being aborted
==>  rdump: SIGTERM received 
==>  rdump: The ENTIRE dump is aborted
==>  
==>  Needless to say, this makes it hard to do my backups since the 8mm is the 
==>  only tape drive I have.  Has anyone else run into this problem and fixed 
==>  it?
==>  
==>  I also never had the message 
==>  
==>  rdump: Remote system is not known to be compatible for magtape functions, output being treated as regular file
==>  
==>  until I upgraded to 4.0x.  
==>  
==>  I have not had a chance to install any patches on this machine or the other
==>  machines in my 4.0 secure NIS domain.  Will that help?  I have gone 3 months 
==>  not being able to backup these machines.  Buying a tape drive specifically 
==>  for this one domain is not an option, we must buy what will service all 
==>  the domains that I administer.  
==>  
==>  Thank you.
==>  
==>  Kris Larsen
==>  
==>  %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
==>  
==>  Kristin L. Larsen		aka) "Hey you!"
==>  System Administrator, AFIT/ENY	
==>  Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
==>  ICES contractor			
==>  klarsen_at_afit.af.mil		AFIT e-mail
==>  
==>  %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
==>  
==>  
The only replies I received were from Tom Leitner in Graz, Austria.  He 
suggested:
Why don't you just use vdump to dump the Digital Unix machine to the
remote Sun tape? Something like this:
vdump -v -u -0 -F 64 -b 60 -f - /usr | rsh remote-host dd ibs=60k obs=60k
of=/dev/nrst8
Tom
and
Another alternative is Gnu-Tar, alias gtar. I have it on all machines.
You can use something like:
       gtar cvf remote-machine:remote-tape /home
without problems.
Tar is the perfect format for you as you can read the resulting tape
on virtually any Unix system around :-)
Let me know if you need the binary or the sources (ftp.gnu.org).
Tom
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
T o m   L e i t n e r                       Dept. of Communications
                                            Graz University of Technology, 
e-mail    : tom_at_finwds01.tu-graz.ac.at      Inffeldgasse 12
Phone     : +43-316-873-7455                A-8010 Graz / Austria / Europe
Fax       : +43-316-463-697
Home page : 
http://wiis.tu-graz.ac.at/people/tom.html
PGP public key on : 
ftp://wiis.tu-graz.ac.at/pgp-keys/tom.asc or send 
mail with subject "get Thomas Leitner" to pgp-public-keys_at_keys.pgp.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Before we have the paperless office, we have the paperless toilet!
After 10+ years I did not think of either because I had gotten into a rut.  
Neither will be adequate for me.  I filched a tape drive from another 
department and will use it to do backups locally.  The dump on the 
SUN machines software for the rdump/rmt can not talk with the rdump/rmt 
on the DEC.  Oh well, live and learn something new each day :-)
Kris Larsen
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Kristin L. Larsen		aka) "Hey you!"
System Administrator, AFIT/ENY	
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
ICES contractor			
klarsen_at_afit.af.mil		AFIT e-mail
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Received on Tue May 12 1998 - 22:15:39 NZST