Why does my XYZ backup program complain about “Invalid argument” errors?
zftape requires the data to be written in multiples of a fixed minimal block size. This is a very usual behavior for a tape device. There are three ways to get rid of those errors: • set Ftape’s block size to the block size used by the backup program. The example below works for “afio”: mt -f /dev/qft0 setblk 5120 • If you don’t want to use Ftape’s built in compression you can also use mt -f /dev/qft0 setblk 0 to switch Ftape to variable block size mode and be able to write the data in arbitrary portions to the tape (BUT: the builtin compression doesn’t work with this setting). When you intend to use “KBackup” then this is the only way to make it work together with Ftape (it _may_ work, don’t know if it does) • tell your backup program about Ftape’s default block size of 10k (which is also the default of GNU tar). For “afio” you can use the following command line switch: afio -b 10k … You may want to read the section “Tape blocks” of the manual (use its “Concept index” to directly ju
