[KLUG Members] why is my tape drive so slow???

[Adam Williams]

> standbys like dump and tar.  The problem is neither of these seem to be 
> able to use the tape efficiently.  It keeps backing up, 

It is "shoe-shining".

> I assume because 
> the system isn't feeding it data fast enough.  

Most likely.

> Here's the hardware 
> details:  Pentium 2 350, 192 Megs memory.  Drive system is an LVM mirror 
> of fairly new 60 gig IDE hard drives.  tape is a Seagate DDS-3 SCSI 
> (although I've had the same problem with an HP Colorado TR-4) controlled 
> by an Adaptec 2940UW.  Redhat Linux 8.0, standard Kernel.  Since I don't 
> run XWindows, shouldn't this machine be more than capable of keeping up 
> with the tape drive?

If you do a "mt -f /dev/st0 status" what does it say?  Are you passing
tar any blocking factors?