Working with a practice tape on which I've duplicated the problem, I've
come up with the following method of getting past that EOT mark. Please
let me know if there is any better method out there.
My solution was to eliminate the EOT mark by tar-ing a large file onto
the beginning of the tape, opening the tape drive door in the middle of
the tar write so that a new EOT could not be put onto the tape. Based
upon the design of the 1/4" tape cartridge this did not seem to present a
significant chance for physical damage to the tape or tape drive. Please
let me know if I overlooked something here.
I now have a corrupt data tape, but one in which I can use "mt -f
/dev/rmt/0mn fsf" to get up to the corrupt block, and then collect the
remaining tar files with "dd if=/dev/rmt/0mn of=disk.file conv=noerror".
The one remaining problem I have is that dd sometimes locks up the tape
drive as an unkillable zombie process if the drive gives up on reading
the tape before it gets out of the corrupted data block.
Comments or suggestions?