mkboottape(1M)
mkboottape - make a boot tape filesystem
As shipped in IRIX 6.5.15. Unchanged since IRIX 6.5.
NAME mkboottape - make a boot tape filesystem SYNOPSIS /etc/mkboottape [-f output_file] [-l | -x [file ...] | file ...] DESCRIPTION mkboottape is used to build, list, or extract "boot tape filesystems". Booting from tape is no longer supported. However, the tape filesystem format is still used in the sa file used in booting from CDROM. A tape filesystem consists of a special directory that contains the list of filenames, sizes, and offsets, and from one to 20 files. Filenames can be up to 16 characters in length. The following options are understood: -l List the contents of the boot tape. In this case the file arguments are ignored. -f [output_file] Specify an alternate output file or device. The default is /dev/tape. -x [file ...] Extract files from the boot tape. If no filenames are given, all files are extracted. Extracted files have their original size (they are not null padded to a block multiple). The typical use for this program is to create an output file that is used in booting from CDROM, or to extract files from that "filesystem". The PROM monitor understands the boot tape format. NOTES Unless you have means to create a standalone program, this utility is useful only listing or extracting the files, or creating new boot images from previously extracted files. In some cases it can be used to extract the standalone programs into a directory, because most standalone programs can be booted from the filesystem using sash or over a network. SEE ALSO distcp(1M), inst(1M).