Re: [Dump-users] Cannot open output<?>

[Stelian P. <po...@cy...>]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2000 cco...@sw... wrote:

> I'm curious to know what the "Cannot open output..." line means, as well as why dumps would run sporadically.

This message occures when dump was not able to open(2) the
device. This could mean that you had no tape in drive, your
tape driver was not ready (not loaded if it's a kernel module),
maybe device permissions etc.

As for the 'sporadic' dumps, I don't understand what you mean...

> Also, can anyone point me to the algorithm for determining the magic incantations for blocksize, length and data density?

The blocksize, density etc are related to device capabilities. 
Old tape devices worked in fixed block and gap size, and you 
had to choose those values really well in order to really use
the capacity of the tape.

This is no longer true, so you are probably safe with -B if you
want to specify your tape size or -a if you want dump to 
automatically guess it.

Stelian.
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