Question : Problem: Reading System VR4.2 Data on HP Surestore DAT8

I have a Sun Solaris 5.6 (System V Release 4.0) to which I have attached a HP SUrestore DAT8 tape drive. The data on the 8GB data catridge was created using the cpio command on a Unix System V Release 4.2 Fujitsu unix Super Server

My questions are:
1) when I type "cpio -civt < /dev/rmt/0" to try to see what is on the tape, i get the erro:

"cpio: I/O error on "input", errno 12, Not enough space"

I thought that this commands is just to list the contents. Also, i do have enough space.

Answer : Problem: Reading System VR4.2 Data on HP Surestore DAT8

Have a look at this:
http://www.adminschoice.com/docs/solaris_error_message_l_n.htm#errno158

It talks about insufficient swap space.

errno 12 refers to "not enough space" - so I'd check swap and memory. Also check that the root and tmp filesystems have space.