TCOPY(1)

NAME
tcopy - copy and/or verify mag tapes

SYNOPSIS
tcopy [-cvx] [-s maxblk] [src [dest]]

DESCRIPTION
The tcopy utility is designed to copy magnetic tapes. The only assumption made about the tape is that there are two tape marks at the end. The tcopy utility with only a source tape (/dev/sa0 by default) specified will print information about the sizes of records and tape files. If a destination is specified a copy will be made of the source tape. The blocking on the destination tape will be identical to that used on the source tape. Copying a tape will yield the same output as if just printing the sizes.

Options:

-c  Copy src to dest and then verify that the two tapes are identical.

-s maxblk
    Specify a maximum block size, maxblk.

-v  Given the two tapes, src and dest verify that they are identical.

-x  Output all informational messages to the standard error. This option is useful when dest is /dev/stdout.

SEE ALSO
mtio(4)

HISTORY
The tcopy command appeared in 4.3BSD.

BUGS

Writing an image of a tape to a file does not preserve much more than the raw data. Block size(s) and tape EOF marks are lost which would otherwise be preserved in a tape-to-tape copy.

EOD is determined by two sequential EOF marks with no data between. There are old systems which typically wrote three EOF's between tape files. The tcopy utility will erroneously stop copying early in this case.

When using the copy/verify option -c tcopy does not rewind the tapes prior to start. A rewind is performed after writing prior to the verification stage. If one doesn't start at BOT then the comparison may not be of the intended data.