Taper FAQ

Yusuf Nagree

1. General

• 1.1 Why aren't you responding to my e-mail?
• 1.2 Why is taper already up to version 6 when a lot of programs that have been around a lot longer are only up to versions 2,3 etc..
• 1.3 Does taper support parallel port drives (eg. IOMEGA, SYQUEST, Backpack)?
• 1.4 Does taper support the xxxxx drive?
• 1.5 Does taper support tape drives greater than 2 gigabytes?

2. User interface

• 2.1 How do I de-select a file in backup?
• 2.2 How do I de-select a file in restore?
• 2.3 How do I move between YES and NO in message boxes?
• 2.4 How do I exclude a subdirectory or file?
• 2.5 Why does the display in verify/backup/full restore appear jerky and misses files?
• 2.6 I'm unable to type anything into dialog boxes?

3. Compiling

• 3.1 Where do I get the latest ncurses?
• 3.2 I compile and get many errors saying ANSI does not support long long.
• 3.3 Why do I get a gcc fatal signal 11 message when compiling taper
• 3.4 When compiling, the compiler complains that it cannot find curses.h.
• 3.5 I get error messages wattron and wattroff not found when compiling.
• 3.6 I am getting errors such as syntax error before `int' while compiling.
• 3.7 Why do I get an error about not being able to find form.h when compiling?
• 3.8 I get an error : compress/gzip.h: conflicting types for 'basename' when compiling taper
• 3.9 I get the following errors whilst compiling: select_box.h:125: parse error before `umode_t'.

4. Problems in backup and restore

• 4.1 I keep on getting the error message Device or resource busy while trying to open backup device.
• 4.2 I get a No such device error when trying to backup or restore.
• 4.3 Why does taper say Rewinding tape for a flash and then before it starts to read, takes a long time to start actually read.
• 4.4 Why does taper say Tape drive type has not been set when started

5. Problems backing up

• 5.1 Whenever I try to select a file or directory for backup, I get the error message tt File is on exclusion list/.
• 5.2 I am mid-way through backing up in the directory /proc and I get funny messages such as -7% done and the program seems to hang?
• 5.3 When doing backups that take more than one tape, when it reaches the end of the tape, taper segmentation faults.
• 5.4 After doing a backup or mkinfo, taper exists saying Unable to create info file.
• 5.5 Taper works fine in interactive mode, but when I run it from a cron job, I get a Can't start backup child error mailed to me.
• 5.6 Taper says Can't start backup child.
• 5.7 Taper says Can't start backup child when running under a cron job.
• 5.8 I notice that zftape has a compressed mode. Should I use taper compression or zftape compression
• 5.9 Why does taper seg fault at the end of a backup or while updating the header files.
• 5.10 Why is taper not compressing my files even though I have compression turned on?
• 5.11 I am using ftape version 3 and getting some spurious results.
• 5.12 I am running from a cron job and keep on getting mailed errors about not being able to start a backup child. It works fine from the command line.
• 5.13 I keep on getting an "alarm clock" error.
• 5.14 Every now an then, taper just stops whilst backing up and requires a keypress to continue.
• 5.15 Taper doesn't backup correctly and the log file has lots of "W:Write Child Segmentation Fault" messages.

6. Problems restoring

• 6.1 After doing a restore, the permissions on the files are correct, but all the files are owned by the user running restore (ie. ownership of files and directories is not correctly set).
• 6.2 Restore give me a lot of warnings about unable to set times, and permissions.
• 6.3 I backed up using taper-5.1.3 or earlier and when I try and restore, not all my files are being printed on the restore screen, or funny filenames appear in my restore screen.
• 6.4 Why does restore print Can't give warning & error count.
• 6.5 How do I restore my files in the directory from which they were originally backed up?
• 6.6 I make a backup and all seems well, but then when I try to restore or verify, taper says `This is not a taper archive' or taper says `This is tape 0. Insert tape 1'
• 6.7 I make a backup OK but when I try and restore, taper gives errors in the log file such as `Creating device xxxx' when xxx should be a file.

7. Problems verifying/restoring info files

• 7.1 Why is taper sluggish when selecting files to restore?
• 7.2 Why does taper try to advance to a non-existent volume and then print an error message?
• 7.3 If I'm verifying and I run out of temporary disk space, then taper says some of my files aren't the same as on the disk when I know they are
• 7.4 I made a backup under ftape version 3 and am trying to restore under zftape and it won't restore my files.

8. Specific tape drives

• 8.1 The Seagate TR4 SCSI drive
• 8.2 Some SCSI drives
• 8.3 Adaptec aicxxx

9. Miscellaneous

• 9.1 I am getting errors such as st0: Error with sense data: extra data not valid Current error st09:00 and sense key Medium Error and Additional sense indicates Id crc or ecc error.
• 9.2 I am getting lots of temporary files in the /tmp directory and taper is dying with FIFO errors in the log file.
• 9.3 I am using a SCSI drive and taper says my drive cannot seek, when I know it can.
• 9.4 In version 6.5, taper is not using preferences in my preference file
• 9.5 In version 6.5, taper can't find my info files
• 9.6 How do I compress my info files which are currently uncompressed?
• 9.7 Why does looking for recursive links result in a seg fault?
• 9.8 Why are the info files so big?
• 9.9 My backup sets are no longer being recognized.