tar dies on making tape backup

[Micah]

Jaime wrote:
>     I'm attempting to use tar to feed my filesystem(s) to a DLT tape 
> drive.  I've done this with FreeBSD 3 through 5 and DAT (DDS-3 and 
> DDS-4) tapes for years.  The command now appears to work for a while and 
> then dies with this message about 2.5 hours into the process:
> 
> archive_write_pax_header: 'x' header failed?!  This can't happen.
> 
>     Any idea what this means?
> 
>     I'm using:
> $ uname -a
> FreeBSD atlas.cairodurham.org 6.1-STABLE FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE #0: Wed Jun 
> 28 11:27:09 EDT 2006     
> root at atlas.cairodurham.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  i386
> 
>     This is my first FreeBSD 6.x system, my first SMP kernel, and my 
> first DLT drive on a FreeBSD system.  Using Google, I couldn't find any 
> answers that were useful.  (Just a few dead threads from various forums 
> and mailing lists.)
> 
>                             Thanks in advance,
>                             Jaime

I had the same problem recently and Google told me to look for files 
with malformed dates. I used "find" to search for files dated before Jan 
1, 1970, and found one dated 1901. As soon as I "touch"ed the 
problematic file, tar worked.

HTH,
Micah