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Having located, downloaded the .tgz and uncompressed it, I am now faced with three directories tape1,tape2, and tape3 with 10 or numbered bits.

Using

od -c

and

vi :%!xxd

did not produce anything like English, and this is supposed to be the source tree. Any suggestions how I can extract the contents of the tape image files please.

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    Maybe the file command will help identify what these are. Commented Feb 26, 2020 at 20:15
  • .tgz should be a compressed tar. Did it decompress without error? Did you actually extract it with tar? Where did 3 directories come from? What are "numbered bits". If you have files with names like tape1, it is quite possible that they are tars (or even compressed tars) that were wrapped in another tar layer. GNU tar will unpack older tar formats -- see the --format option. Options posix, ustar or v7 might be useful. Commented Feb 26, 2020 at 20:27
  • Maybe this question over at Server Fault can help: serverfault.com/questions/366571/restore-old-sunos-tapes/475723 Commented Feb 26, 2020 at 22:25
  • @Paul_Pedant GNU tar is not recommended as it's archive support is bad. better use star that includes more and better format support, e.g. cpio as well. Commented Feb 27, 2020 at 15:16
  • Can your provide a list of files? And FWIW, a tgz file almost certainly didn't originate in that form on an old Sun machine. Commented Feb 27, 2020 at 21:01

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This is a long time...

As far as I remember, the install tape #1 contains the following "files", where a "file" is data between two EOF marks on the tape. I am not 100% sure with the order and the exact tape file indices:

  • a stand-alone boot with a menu on file #1

  • a kernel image

  • a ram disk image

  • a standalone disk formatter

  • one or more TAR archives with parts of the install or at least an inventory list.

In other words: if you tell the boot prom to boot from tape, if does the right things.

So what are you interested in?

If you like to analyze the tapes, I recommend to do the following:

mt -f /dev/rmt1n asf 1 # or a similar tape device that fits star -tv f=/dev/rmt1n

Then continue with mt afs 2 ... until you get an error message that indicates a hard EOF on the tape. Skip tape files that are flagged by star as non-archive...

The other tapes contain more or less just one tar image.

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  • Thank you for taking the time to reply. I do not have "real" tape, just a .tgz tape that unpacked to three directories each with a series of files numbered in ascending order and of various sizes possibly individual files from the original tapes. Commented Feb 27, 2020 at 17:29
  • You did not mention what you like to do. If you like to create a QIC boot tape, you just need to dd the images in the right order to a QIC tape cassette using the no-rewind tape device entry. Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 11:00
  • Hi I am trying to build/regenerate the source tree of Sunos_3.2_sun2 from the tgz tape. i successfully uncompressed the tar , into ./Sunos_3.2_sun2" what I have is four directors ./Sunos_3.2_sun2/tape1, etc Commented Feb 29, 2020 at 13:28
  • Hi I am trying to build/regenerate the source tree of Sunos_3.2_sun2 from the tgz tape. i successfully uncompressed the tar , into ./Sunos_3.2_sun2" what I have is four directors ./Sunos_3.2_sun2/tape1, etc Commented Feb 29, 2020 at 13:37
  • part II of comment: ls -R gives; Sunos_3.2_sun2: tape1 tape2 tape3 tape4 Sunos_3.2_sun2-tapeimgs/tape1: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 Sunos_3.2_sun2-tapeimgs/tape2: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 Sunos_3.2_sun2-tapeimgs/tape3: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 Sunos_3.2_sun2-tapeimgs/tape4: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 file 01, gives 01: data Commented Feb 29, 2020 at 13:37

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