Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Hi All.

"ve got a tape media with a backup using tar command made from a server running AIX 4.3.3. The data has links. When I go to a server running AIX 5.3 installed with the same tape drive and try to use tar -tvf /dev/rmt1 to lidt tape contents, I get an error message " Can not read: There is noit enough memory available now"
I checked the tape attributes and configuration, everything is very OK.

Pliz help me to get arround this problem. I really need this data restored to a new server.

Thanks
Robert

Originally posted by: Sam_k

tar execution might have exceeded the memory quota - you can
check by running this from the same account:
ulimit -m

If you need to up the quota, check the manpage for ulimit.

If ulimit is not a factor, you could check out memory consumption while
running tar with vmstat or nmon.

good luck

Originally posted by: nagger

Not enough memory is a weird error from tar!
First make sure the tape is read only.

First it is worth checking that you are on the current AIX 5.3 maintenance level.
If not you may have hit a bug fixed two years ago!!
At the very least get to ML3

Next, memory - could be a paging problem - do you have virtual memory free?
Use: lsps -a

Purhaps, you created the tape os a funny block size.
If you use tcopy /dev/rmt0
Wait 10 seconds and then Control-C, it should tell you the block size to use.

Another old dodge is getting the tape content on to disk first and then using tar.
this way you don't have to wait for the tape drive or rewinding.
Use dd to read the tape to disk. and then tar the disk file.

What explicit tar options did you use on the AIX 4.3 machine.
Can you detail what you mean by checked the tape attributes?

Of course, you could call AIX Support - they may be aware of some compatibility issues and can advise you further.

If all else fails have a look at the file - does it look like the data is intact and if a good C programmer you could write a program to read it :-)

Good luck, N