From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.3-SGI_XFS_1.0.1 i686) Description of problem: kernel 2.4.7-2 #1 tar-1.13.19-5 Exabyte 85058SQANXR1 Tape Drive SCSI card sym53c810a Alpha Station 233 I try to do anything with the tape drive will tar and I get tar: /dev/st0: Cannot read: Cannot allocate memory tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Insert tape 2. Try tar -tf /dev/st0 or tar -xf /dev/st0 3. Actual Results: Get error Expected Results: See contents of tape Additional info: Same results for standard RH7.1 kernel. I tried rawhide kernel.
Ok, I searched the LKML and found a similiar message. It said that I need to specify block size now with kernel 2.4 So I added a -b 64 to my tar command and I can rw to my tape again! Unless you have some comments, I will suggest this bug as resolved but wonder if a bit more verbosity can be given.