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COPYTAPE(1) General Commands Manual COPYTAPE(1) NAME copytape - duplicate magtapes SYNOPSIS copytape f] t] snnn] lnnn] v] ] DESCRIPTION copytape duplicates magtapes. It is intended for duplication of bootable or other non-file-structured (non-tar-structured) magtapes on systems with only one tape drive. copytape is blissfully ignorant of tape formats. It merely makes a bit-for-bit copy of its input. In normal use, copytape would be run twice. First, a boot tape is copied to an intermediate disk file. The file is in a special format that preserves the record boundaries and tape marks. On the second run, copytape reads this file and generates a new tape. The second step may be repeated if multiple copies are required. The typical process would look like this: tutorial% copytape /dev/rmt8 tape.tmp tutorial% copytape tape.tmp /dev/rmt8 tutorial% rm tape.tmp copytape copies from the standard input to the standard output, unless input and output arguments are provided. It will automatically deter- mine whether its input and output are physical tapes, or data files. Data files are encoded in a special (human-readable) format. Since copytape will automatically determine what sort of thing its in- put and output are, a twin-drive system can duplicate a tape in one pass. The command would be tutorial% copytape /dev/rmt8 /dev/rmt9 OPTIONS -snnn Skip tape marks. The specified number of tape marks are skipped on the input tape, before the copy begins. By default, nothing is skipped, resulting in a copy of the complete input tape. Multiple tar(1) and dump(1) archives on a single tape are normally separated by a single tape mark. On ANSI or IBM labelled tapes, each file has three associated tape marks. Count carefully. -lnnn Limit. Only nnn files (data followed by a tape mark), at most, are copied. This can be used to terminate a copy early. If the skip option is also specified, the files skipped do not count against the limit. -f From tape. The input is treated as though it were a physical tape, even if it is a data file. This option can be used to copy block- structured device files other than magtapes. -t To tape. The output is treated as though it were a physical tape, even if it is a data file. Normally, data files mark physical tape blocks with a (human-readable) header describing the block. If the -t option is used when the output is actually a disk file, these headers will not be written. This will extract all the information from the tape, but copytape will not be able to duplicate the origi- nal tape based on the resulting data file. -v Verbose. copytape does not normally produce any output on the con- trol terminal. The verbose option will identify the input and out- put files, tell whether they are physical tapes or data files, and announce the size of each block copied. This can produce a lot of output on even relatively short tapes. It is intended mostly for diagnostic work. FILES /dev/rmt* SEE ALSO ansitape(1), dd(1), tar(1), mtio(4), copytape(5) AUTHOR David S. Hayes, Site Manager, US Army Artificial Intelligence Center. Originally developed September 1984 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti- tute, Troy, New York. Revised July 1986. This software is in the pub- lic domain. BUGS copytape treats two successive file marks as logical end-of-tape. The intermediate data file can consume huge amounts of disk space. A 2400-foot reel at 6250-bpi can burn 140 megabytes. This is not strictly speaking a bug, but users should be aware of the possibility. Check disk space with df(1) before starting copytape. Caveat Emptor! A 256K buffer is used internally. This limits the maximum block size of the input tape. 25 June 1986 COPYTAPE(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | BUGS
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