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I've been handed an LTO3 which has been written with content, but I have no idea how it was made. I've been given the task of finding out what is actually stored on the tape. I've tried the usual tar command but the errors suggest the tape wasn't written using tar. What would be the simplest way of me discovering what type of content is on the tape? I am quite new to all this so a step by step would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

I have used the following commands:

This is an attempt to get a list of the contents- Input1 :

dd if=/dev/nst0 bs=256k skip=1 | /bin/tar -tf - > file.txt

Output 1:

dd: ‘/dev/nst0’: cannot skip to specified offset
dd: warning: partial read (65536 bytes); suggest iflag=fullblock
/bin/tar: This does not look like a tar archive
/bin/tar: Skipping to next header
dd: error reading ‘/dev/nst0’: Input/output error
0+357469 records in
0+357469 records out
23427088384 bytes (23 GB) copied, 260.175 s, 90.0 MB/s
/bin/tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

Input 2:

tar -b 512 -tf /dev/st0 > file.txt

Output 2:

tar: Record size = 128 blocks
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: Too many errors, quitting
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Attempt to extract:

Input 3:

tar -b 512 -xvf /dev/nst0

Output 3:

tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

I've now tried tihs to dd some of the contents into a file:

Input 4:

dd if=/dev/nst0 of=file.dat bs=8k count=1

Output 4:

dd: error reading ‘/dev/nst0’: Cannot allocate memory
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes (0 B) copied, 0.000700687 s, 0.0 kB/s
neilH
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1 Answers1

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I would just dd the first say 8k to a file dd if=/dev/nst0 of=file.dat bs=8k count=1, then use file, or strings, or hexdump, or od, or something to examine the contents. Perhaps there is some header information that will tell you what the was used to write the tape. Otherwise it could be almost anything, and getting the information out in a way that you can use might be pretty improbable.

lsd
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