by >I created a tar tape (4mm dat uncompressed) on a Sun running Solaris
>2.3. I can't read it on Linux. Same version of Gnu tar (1.11.2) on
>both systems. Same tape drive on both systems (from home to work). I
>didn't specify the block size when I created it. Linux complains
>about the block size. How do I find out what block size was used? I
>tried -B; it's supposed to figure out the block size. Any suggestions?
If this is the case, than you can find the block size in the following way:
# mt rewind
# dd if=/dev/tape of=/tmp/firstBlock bs=32k count=1
Then look with "ls -l" at /tmp/firstBlock - its size is the size of blocks
on tape, obviously.