tar/tape

[Dr Gavin Seddon <gavin.m.seddon@man.ac.uk>]

Hello,
When i try tar cvf /dev/tape to backup my machine, I get:

tar: /dev/tape: Wrote only 4096 of 10240 bytes
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

The data should fit on a tape without compression, so I don't think it's
a space problem.  Can anyone suggest what to do?

Also, What command should I use to do incremental backups with tar? 
Since the u argument only appeared to backup later copies of already
exhisting files on the tape and the r argument appended everything
again.  I would use the N argument but I don't know the date format.  

Gavin.


-- 
Dr Gavin Seddon <gavin.m.seddon@man.ac.uk>
University of Manchester