It's documented as bug # 16390:

%%% TITLE: Filer responds to rmt status inquiry with an error code %%% DESCRIPTION: Filers support the rmt protocol and thus a tape drive attached to a filer can act as a target rmt tape drive. The rmt driver on the filer will respond to a status inquiry (S option) with an error code. This behavior breaks ufsdump on Solaris 7 since it requests the status of the target rmt drive and receives an error back if the rmt device is attached to a filer. %%% WORKAROUND: Do not select rmt devices on Netapp's filers as target output devices for ufsdump on Solaris 7.

The fix is currently scheduled for 5.3.5.

Andrew

-----Original Message----- From: owner-dl-toasters@netapp.com [mailto:owner-dl-toasters@netapp.com]On Behalf Of Dave Atkin Sent: 23 November 1999 08:31 To: Artur Shnayder Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: reading tar format tapes

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Artur Shnayder wrote:

...

Hello, I wonder if anybody had experience with reading tar format

tapes from

...

device, that connected to Network Appliance. I tried from Solaris machine "tar xvf netapp:nrst0a" ... and got "netapp:nrst0a: No such file or directory". ufsdump utility works fine.

Netapp's implementation of the rmt protocol is at best "minimalist" and at worst wrong. Earlier this year I spent a few happy hours with a protocol analyser and found that filers don't respond properly to tape drive status requests and hence some clients won't talk to them. That may be the problem in this case.

I reported this to Netapp some time ago but I don't know if anything happened. It's probably fixed in a future major release of their no-upgrades-needed OS!

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Dave Atkin, Head of Technical Services Computing Service, University of York, YORK YO10 5DD Phone: +44-1904-433804 (ddi) Fax: +44-1904-433740 Email: D.Atkin@york.ac.uk

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