Are there good
Linux packages for dealing with foreign tapes, such
as handling variable block sizes?
dd will handle variable block sizes on a
per-tape-file basis. I'm
sure there are other utilities that can as well.
My own favourite is copytape, which works well with tape drives that
fit the Unix model of stream-of-tape-blocks. (It works less well, but
better than not at all, with drives like the old Sun quarter-inch
drives that are not a stream of variable-sized blocks but rather a
stream of fixed-size blocks which the driver is willing to
transparently reblock to any multiple of that fixed size.)
ftp.rodents.montreal.qc.ca:/mouse/local/src/copytape/ is the source I
have (which is a slight tweakage of the version I got).
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