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8.2.3: File marks and tar

There is at least one peculiarity when using the tar program with tape devices. The problem is, that tar writes its own end of file (EOF) mark to the tape. This `EOF' mark consists simply of one or more zeroed tar records (data entities of size 512 bytes). tar stops reading back a backup volume as soon as it finds such a zeroed record. But this also means, that tar never reads in the file mark provided by the tape device. This has an effect when extracting more than one volume from a tape cartridge: after tar has completed extracting the first one, one needs to use a `mt -f /dev/tape fsf' to skip to the next volume (where one has to replace `/dev/tape' by the tape device one actually uses).


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