[daip] reading old [sun] tapes on new [linux] system

[Eric Greisen]

joe cammisa writes:
 > hello.  we recently made the jump from an aging solaris box and an
 > old-ish installation of aips to a spiffy new linux machine running aips
 > 31dec00.  all has been going swimmingly for months, thank you very much.
 > 
 > however, of late certain faculty members are attempting to resuscitate
 > old data written to tape from aips/solaris unknown years (and aips
 > versions ago).  the linux system is batting approximately .000 on this
 > task; the workaround we've employed thus far is to read the tapes on the
 > aging solaris system and then move the data over afterward; this works
 > in that we can successfully retrieve the data.  unfortunately, the long
 > term aim is to decommission the sun and it would be nice to be able to
 > read the data directly on the linux machine.
 > 
 > so, my question to you kind folks, is:  have you seen such a problem
 > before, and if so, do you know of some way that i can trick the 31dec00
 > aips into reading these old tapes?
 > 

     Yes - we need more information.  The messages from your at-bats
would help.  Some information about the formats used for the backups
is really the essential point.  If FITS was used, then there should be
no problem assuming that the tape drives on your Linux box are working
in AIPS.  If any other format was used, then you can only retrieve via
the solaris box since the byte order of solaris and linux is opposite.
(FITS uses a defined byte order supported by all architectures.)

Eric Greisen