3263 lines
107 KiB
Plaintext
3263 lines
107 KiB
Plaintext
Ftape-HOWTO
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Claus-Justus Heine, <heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de>
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v3.0, August 1998
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This HOWTO discusses essential do's and dont's for the ftape floppy
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tape driver under Linux. It focusses on the newest version which is
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ftape-4.02 at the time of this writing. This HOWTO is to be intended
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as first step help and source of information. The ftape driver inter-
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faces to QIC-40, QIC-80, QIC-3010 and QIC-3020 compatible drives, and
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to the Iomega Ditto 2GB and Ditto Max drives. The QIC-3010 and
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QIC-3020 standards are also known as `Travan' (TR-2 and TR-3). These
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drives connect via the floppy disk controller (FDC) which may be
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either an internal FDC or inside of certain parallel port floppy tape
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drives. Please refer to the section ``Supported drives'' for further
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information. ftape does not cover SCSI or QIC-02 tape drives. DAT
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tape drives usually (always?) connect to a SCSI controller. This is
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but one of the Linux HOWTO documents. You can get an index of the
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HOWTOs from the Linux HOWTO index, while the real HOWTO's can be
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fetched (using ftp) from sunsite.unc.edu:pub/Linux/doc/HOWTO (this is
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the ``official'' place) or via the World Wide Web from the Linux Docu-
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mentation Project home page.
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______________________________________________________________________
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Table of Contents
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1. Legalese
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2. Revision History
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3. The preliminaries
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3.1 Other sources of information
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3.2 Contacts
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3.3 What is
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4. Getting and installing
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4.1 Getting
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4.2 Differences between
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4.3 Installing the driver with v2.0.x and earlier kernels
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4.4 Installing the driver with v2.1.x and later kernels
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4.5 Following the development of the
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4.6 Mixing
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5. The Care and Feeding of Tape and Tape Drives
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5.1 Formatting
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5.1.1 Can I format my tapes under Linux?
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5.1.2 Which formatting programs can I use under DOS?
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5.2 Retensioning
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5.3 Drive Cleaning
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5.4 Repairing de-spooled cartridges
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6. Hardware support
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6.1 Supported tape drives
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6.2 Supported special controllers
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6.2.1 Colorado FC-10, FC-20
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6.2.2 Mountain MACH-2
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6.2.3 Iomega Tape Accelerator II
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6.2.4 Iomega Ditto Dash and other 2Mbps controllers
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6.2.5 Iomega Ditto EZ PnP controller
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6.3 Unsupported tape drives
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6.4 Using an external tape drive with
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6.5 PCI motherboards and
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7. Backing up and restoring data
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7.1 Writing an archive to a tape
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7.2 Restoring an archive
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7.3 Testing the archive
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7.4 Putting more than one backup on a tape
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7.5 Appending files to an archive
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7.6 Mount/unmounting tapes
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8. Creating an emergency boot floppy for
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9. Frequently Asked Questions
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10. FAQ: "Compiling and installing Ftape" related questions !
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10.1 What Ftape version should I use?
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10.2 I'm having problems getting my XYZ drive to run under the 2.0.xx kernel with the built-in driver. How do I fix this?
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10.3 I'm running Linux/SMP and the system just freezes when trying to access the Ftape devices!
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10.4 Why does depmod complain about "undefined symbols"?
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10.5 "insmod" says the kernel version is wrong
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10.6 "insmod" says that kernel 1.2.0 and 1.2.0 differ
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10.7 Trying to compile Ftape gives me the error "modversions.h: no such file or directory"
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10.8 What is this versioned symbols stuff anyway?
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10.9 I seem to be getting sftape instead of zftape. When I run "ftmt status" command, I get output that the Ftape docs says corresponds to sftape ( /dev/qft0: Invalid argument ). Why?
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10.10 My Ditto DASH/FC-20/Exabyte Accelerator card works under Microsoft Windows, but I get a drive not found type of error in /var/log/messages when trying to use it under Linux.
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10.11 Ftape DMA transfers gives ECC errors
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10.12 Help! I'm getting 'dmaalloc() failed' in my syslog file.
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10.13 Syslogd works overtime when running Ftape
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10.14 How do I change the trace-level?
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10.15 I'm having problems with Ftape. I'm using the latest version of Ftape from the Ftape Home Page and believe that I've located a real bug. What should I do?
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11. FAQ: "Using Ftape" related questions !
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11.1 How fast is Ftape ?
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11.2 When I write to some of my tapes, they seem to spend a lot of time "shoe-shining," or repositioning instead of streaming. Is something wrong with my system?
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11.3 Do I have to reboot to the DOS world to format tapes?
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11.4 Is it possibly to format Ditto 2GB tapes with ftape?
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11.5 Is it possibly to format Ditto Max or Max Pro tapes with ftape?
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11.6 Ftape detects more bad sectors than DOS on QIC-3020 tapes
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11.7 Is it ok that I'm not hearing the tape move when I do a fsf or a bsf with mt?
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11.8 Why does my XYZ backup program complain about "Invalid argument" errors?
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11.9 I/O errors and FDC - some explanations.
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11.10 Why do I get "/dev/qft0: No such device" errors?
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11.11 I get "device busy" when I make multiple backups on a tape using some script.
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11.12 How do I "..." with tar?
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11.13 What block-size should I use with tar ?
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11.14 Where can I find the tar/mt/cpio/dd binaries - sources - manpages?
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11.15 If I use tapers compression, is it a bad idea to use the compression with zftape, or would it be better to not use tapers compression, and let zftape do it?
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11.16 How does zftape compression compare to say gzip -9?
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11.17 I don't trust compression, but hear that the sftape interface is going away. What should I do?
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11.18 Ftape says "This tape has no 'Linux raw format"
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11.19 Can I exchange tapes with someone using DOS?
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11.20 How does `mt eom' work when you've started overwriting a tape in the middle?
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11.21 When I made backups before using taper, under the 2.0.29 ftape my drive didn't support fsf, under the new zftape it does, why would this be, and what exactly is fsf ?
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11.22 What exactly is the difference between ftape, and zftape?
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11.23 What is the difference between a rewinding, and non rewinding drive?
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11.24 Can someone tell me how to use mt to rewind my TR-3 drive one record using zftape record, so I can verify it?
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11.25 By non-rewinding, they mean that it doesn't automatically rewind, correct? It doesn't mean that under no circumstances it will rewind, right? I tried using /dev/zqft0, and it instantly rewinds the tape.
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11.26 What is the difference between what mt considers a record and what it considers a file?
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11.27 Reusing tapes with zftape without reformatting the tape.
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11.28 This script implements a simple contents listing for the zftape package using the "MTIOCVOLINFO" ioctl.
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12. FAQ: "Tape and Drivers" related questions !
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12.1 What are good makers of Travan tapes?
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12.2 Where can I obtain the QIC standards?
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12.3 Is the Iomega Ditto 2GB drive supported?
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12.4 Is the Iomega Ditto Max drive supported?
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12.5 Is the Iomega Ditto Max Pro drive supported?
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13. FAQ: Miscellaneous !
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13.1 How to subscribe to the Ftape Mailing List?
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13.2 How to un-subscribe from the Ftape Mailing List?
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13.3 Links to related information.
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14. Debugging the
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14.1 The kernel/
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14.2 OK, it's a bug ...ehhh... feature - How do I submit a report?
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15. Contributions
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______________________________________________________________________
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1. Legalese
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The Linux ftape-HOWTO may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in
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part, subject to the following conditions:
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Copyright (c) 1993-1996 by Kai Harrekilde-Petersen
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Email: khp@dolphinics.no
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Copyright (c) 1996-1997 by Kevin Johnson
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Email: kjj@pobox.com
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Copyright (c) 1998 by Claus-Justus Heine
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Email: heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de
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The Linux ftape-HOWTO is a free document; you may reproduce and/or
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modify it under the terms of version 2 (or, at your option, any later
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version) of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
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Software Foundation.
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This HOWTO is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
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WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
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MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
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General Public License for more details.
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The author encourages wide distribution of this document for personal
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or commercial use, provided that the above copyright notice remains
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intact and the provisions of the GNU General Public License are
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adhered to. The summary is that you may copy and distribute this
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document free of charge, or for a profit. No explicit permission is
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required from the author for reproduction of this document in any
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medium, physical or electronic.
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Note that derivative works and translations of this document must be
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placed under the GNU General Public License, and the original
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copyright notice must remain intact. If you have contributed new
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material to this document, you must make the source code (e.g., SGML
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source) available for your revisions. Please make revisions and
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updates available directly to the author: Contact heine@math1.rwth-
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aachen.de via Internet e-mail. This will allow the author to merge
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updates and provide consistent revisions to the Linux community.
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The author encourages distributors of Linux software in any medium to
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use the HOWTO as an installation and user guide. Given the copyright
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above, you are free to print and distribute copies of this document
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with your software. If doing so, you may wish to include a short
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``installation supplement'' for your release, or modify the relevant
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sections of this book to reflect your product.
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The author would like to know of any plans to publish and distribute
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this HOWTO commercially. In this way, we can ensure that you are kept
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up-to-date with new revisions. And, should a new version be right
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around the corner, you might wish to delay your publication of the
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HOWTO until it is available.
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If you are distributing this HOWTO commercially, donations, royalties,
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and/or printed copies are greatly appreciated by the author.
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Contributing in this way shows your support for free software and the
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Linux Documentation Project.
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If you have questions or comments, please contact the author at
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heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de
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2. Revision History
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version 3.0 (August, 1998)
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o Additions to list of supported hardware.
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o New section about differences between ftape versions.
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o Pointers to the Ftape-FAQ and the Ftape manual.
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o Updated to ftape-4.02.
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o Additions to the FAQ.
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o Update all URLs.
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version 2.0 (March 15, 1997)
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o Updated to ftape v2.11 and v3.xx
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o Lots of updates.
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version 1.9 (September 20, 1996)
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o New maintainers of ftape and the HOWTO.
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o A few minor formatting and spelling fixes.
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o Updated for Linux v2.0.
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o Started to integrate some of Andrew Martin's ftape info.
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version 1.8 (May 22, 1996)
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o Copyright policy changed to GNU GPL v2
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o The maintainer's email address has changed.
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o Updated to ftape-2.08
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o ftape is now a part of the kernel distribution.
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version 1.7.1 (February 13, 1996)
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o Updated to ftape-2.06b
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version 1.7 (January 28, 1996)
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o Updated to ftape-2.06 and modules-1.3.57
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version 1.6.2 (January 23, 1996)
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o Connor TST3200R drive added
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o Updated 2Mbps fdc information.
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version 1.6.1 (January 16, 1996)
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o minor corrections
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version 1.6 (January 10, 1996)
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o New maintainer of ftape
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o updated to v2.05
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o added new drives
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3. The preliminaries
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3.1. Other sources of information
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ftape version 3
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ftape-3.x came with a manual of its own, which is contained in
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the ftape-3.04d package available from the usual places. See
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``Getting Ftape''.
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ftape version 4
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ftape-4.x also has a documentation package ftape-doc which is
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available from the usual places. This Ftape-HOWTO, however, also
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focusses on ftape-4.x and is meant as an entry point to the
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available documentation. See ``Getting Ftape''.
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ftape-tools
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The ftape-tools package (including useful utilities for ftape)
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comes with its own manual. See ``Getting Ftape''.
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Ftape-FAQ
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The Ftape-FAQ is included wordly in this manual, but more recent
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versions may be found at http://www.correct.nl/~ftape.
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3.2. Contacts
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The maintainer of the source for ftape is Claus Heine
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<heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de>. He has a web page at http://www-
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math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape/.
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If you have a problem or questions about ftape, try posting to the
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Linux Tape mailing list linux-tape@vger.rutger.edu (see ``Following
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the ftape development'' below). There also used to be a newsgroup
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that mirrored the mailing list traffic but it has vanished some time
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ago.
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I use ftape (it is my sole means of backing up on my linux box :-). I
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hesitate to make recommendations on what hardware to buy. See the
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section ``Supported drives'' and ``Unsupported drives'' for a list of
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supported and unsupported drives.
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You should try to post a summary of your problems and its solution(s),
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after you've got it working, even if you only got it partially
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working. Please also send a copy copy of your solution to the Linux
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Tape mailing list at <linux-tape@vger.rutgers.edu> so that it can be
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added to the HOWTO and/or the FAQ.
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If you receive this as part of a printed distribution or on a CD-ROM,
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please check out the Linux Documentation home page or ftp to
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ftp://sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/doc/HOWTO to see if there exists a
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more recent version. This could potentially save you a lot of
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trouble.
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If you email me, please include the string ftape in the subject line.
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This will help ensure the mail doesn't inadvertently get buried. But
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preferrably you should email to the Linux Tape mailing list at <linux-
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tape@vger.rutgers.edu> instead of contacting me directly.
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3.3. What is ftape
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ftape is a driver program that controls various low-cost tape drives
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that connect to the floppy controller.
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ftape is not a backup program as such; it is a device driver, which
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allows you to use the tape drive (just like the SoundBlaster 16 driver
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let you use your sound card) through the device files
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/dev/[n]qft[0-3].
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ftape was originally written by Bas Laarhoven <bas@vimec.nl>, with ``a
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little help from his friends'' to sort out the ECC (Error Correcting
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Code) stuff. ftape is copyrighted by Bas under the GNU General Public
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License, which basically says: ``go ahead and share this with the
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world, just don't disallow other people from copying it further''.
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ftape has undergone several changes since then. While the Linux-2.0.x
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kernel series still contains ftape-2.08 the v2.1.x and soon the v2.2.*
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kernel series come with ftape-3.x (hopefully even with ftape-4.02, but
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this wasn't clear at the time of this writing) which differs in some
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points from the ftape-2.x driver. Since version 3.00 the ftape driver
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has been maintained by me (Claus-Justus Heine); it has been changed
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and improved in several respects and support for new hardware has been
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added.
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ftape is quite stable, and has been that for some time now. It is
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reliable enough for critical backups (but it's always a good idea to
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check your backups, so you won't get a nasty surprise some day).
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ftape supports drives that conform to the QIC-117 and one of the
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QIC-80, QIC-40, QIC-3010, and QIC-3020 standards as well as the Iomega
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Ditto 2GB and Ditto Max drives which no longer strictly conform to the
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QIC standards in all respects.
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ftape can drive floppy tape drives that connect to the internal FDC as
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well as certain parallel port floppy tape drives.
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ftape supports neither QIC-02, IDE (ATAPI), nor SCSI tape drives.
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SCSI drives are accessed as /dev/[n]st[0-7] and are supported by the
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kernel through the SCSI drivers. If you look for help on SCSI tape
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drives, you should read the SCSI-howto. ATAPI tape drives are
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supported by the kernel since 1.3.46. See section ``Supported
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drives'' and ``Unsupported drives'' for a list of supported and
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unsupported drives.
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4. Getting and installing ftape
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4.1. Getting ftape
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The v2.0.x versions of the kernel include version 2.08 of ftape I
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recommend, however, that you grab the latest version of the full
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source code package for ftape. It is a newer version, includes files
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that are not included in the kernel v2.0.X distribution, and includes
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much better documentation about how to install ftape. The v2.1.x and
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later versions of the kernel include the version 3.04 of ftape.
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I recommend that you download the latest stable version of ftape which
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is 4.02 at the time of this writing and is available from
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http://www-math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape/archives.html
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as well as from
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ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes/.
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You probably should also grab the ftape-doc and the ftape-tools
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package that are available from the same locations.
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If you still want to use the ftape-2.08 which is shipped with the
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v2.0.x kernels, then you get a version of the driver which is really
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out of date and doesn't support QIC-3020 tapes at 2Mbps correctly,
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neither does it support the Ditto 2GB drives nor the Ditto Max drives
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nor any kind of parallel port tape drive. The section ``Supported
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drives'' gives detailed information about which version of the ftape
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driver supports which hardware.
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4.2. Differences between ftape-2.x , ftape-3.x and ftape-4.x ver-
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sions
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ftape-3.x and ftape-4.x use the file system interface that was
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implemented for a branch release which was called zftape. Actually,
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the module that implements the VFS (Virtual File System) interface of
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ftape-3.x and ftape-4.x still is called zftape.o and its C-sources
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inside the kernel tree reside in
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[/usr/src/linux/]drivers/char/ftape/zftape/.
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ftape-2.x (i.e. the version still contained in the v2.0.x kernel) uses
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another file system interface, that was implemented by ftape's
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original author Bas Larhoven.
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File Marks
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The conceptional difference between ftape-2.x and later versions
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of ftape is the way file marks are implemented.
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Floppy tape devices don't have real file marks. (-- File marks
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are used to distinguish different backup sets if you write
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multiple backup sets to a tape. SCSI and QIC-150 tapes have real
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file marks, i.e. between two different backup sets there is a
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region on the tape that is written special data to so that the
|
|
drive logic can detect that marker when the tape is wound with
|
|
(possibly) high speed over those file marks.--) Because the goal
|
|
of ftape's file system interface was from the beginning on to
|
|
provide an interface that could be used with standard Unix-like
|
|
tape utilities (i.e. mt) the developers of ftape started to
|
|
emulate file marks by storing the positions on the tape where a
|
|
file mark should be located in certain fields of the header
|
|
segments. (-- header segments refers to a region at the
|
|
beginning of the tape sized two times 29k to hold some important
|
|
information about the tape format and size and some status
|
|
information.--)
|
|
|
|
However, the QIC standards already designate a special region to
|
|
store such information in, the so called volume table segment.
|
|
Since ftape-3.x this volume table segment is used instead of
|
|
using unused data fields in the header segment. As a result it
|
|
is possible to use your tape cartridge with different operating
|
|
systems in the sense that your Win or DOS backup program will
|
|
realize that certain regions of the tape cartridge are already
|
|
occupied with data, and ftape-3.x and later will detect the
|
|
regions used by those DOS and Win programs. However, you can't
|
|
extract a DOS backup set under Linux or extract a volume written
|
|
by ftape under DOS, safe you write your own software to do that.
|
|
|
|
|
|
IOCTL interface
|
|
There are certain differences in the IOCTL (-- This IO control
|
|
interface is used by e.g. mt to rewind the tape or skip to the
|
|
next file mark or do any other tape operation.--)
|
|
|
|
interface between ftape-2.x and ftape-3.x and later. A detailed
|
|
description can be found in the ftape-manual contained in the
|
|
ftape-doc package. See ``Getting Ftape''.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Formatting
|
|
Formatting of cartridges is supported with ftape-3.x and later
|
|
only. Please get the ftape-tools package that contains the
|
|
ftformat program that interfaces to the driver to format
|
|
cartridges. See ``Getting Ftape''. The ftape-tools package
|
|
comes with (more or less) detailed documentation, so the case of
|
|
formatting cartridges is not dealt with in this document.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Compression
|
|
ftape-3.x supported user transparent on-the-fly compression in
|
|
software. This feature (or bug) has vanished in ftape-4.x as it
|
|
made further improvements concerning the realiability of backups
|
|
very very hard. This means, ftape-4.x comes without compression
|
|
support.
|
|
|
|
However de-compression of compressed archives produced with
|
|
ftape-3.x is supported in order not to brake existing backup
|
|
programs where a user-level filter would not suffice to preserve
|
|
compatibility. Think, e.g., of taper which calls the MTIOC
|
|
ioctls itself instead of relying on the mt program to perform
|
|
tape operations.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The ftape-manual contained in the ftape-doc package contains much more
|
|
detailed information about ftape`s file system interface as well as
|
|
implementation notes which by far exceed the scope of this HOWTO. See
|
|
``Getting Ftape'' for informations about where to obtain the manual.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4.3. Installing the driver with v2.0.x and earlier kernels
|
|
|
|
|
|
The following section provides some useful information to get you
|
|
going with the installation of v4.x which is not shipped with the
|
|
kernel source tree yet but has to be downloaded separately, see the
|
|
section ``Getting ftape'' above.
|
|
|
|
Once you've downloaded the source code (probably ftape-4.02-tar.gz),
|
|
untar it. You can do this by determining what directory you want the
|
|
source code to be located in. I recommend /usr/src/ or ~/src. When
|
|
the tar file is extracted, it will dump everything into a ftape-4.02
|
|
subdirectory, so that you'll end up, in the example I've given, with
|
|
something like /usr/src/ftape-4.02 or ~/src/ftape-4.02.
|
|
|
|
NOTE: you cannot compile ftape-4.02 into your v2.0.x kernel. Instead,
|
|
configure your kernel to not compile the ftape driver and follow the
|
|
installation instructions in the ftape-4.02 distribution and install
|
|
ftape-4.02 as a module.
|
|
|
|
Read the README file. The README is required reading. It's the top
|
|
of the tree, so to speak. If there are specific files that the README
|
|
tells you to read then read them. It will make the process much less
|
|
complicated.
|
|
|
|
Do NOT proceed with compiling the package until you have read the
|
|
appropriate README files and the INSTALL file.
|
|
|
|
Afterwards you need to edit the MCONFIG file and configure you package
|
|
according to your hardware. The MCONFIG file contains lots of
|
|
explanations so it should be fairly easy to go along with it.
|
|
|
|
However, most of the hardware configuration can be done via setting
|
|
parameters during module load time so most parameters specified in the
|
|
file MCONFIG simply give the default configuration, but you don't need
|
|
to recompile the driver to change IO addresses or interrupt settings.
|
|
The file INSTALL and the file modules/insert contain examples how to
|
|
specify the proper module parameters when loading the kernel modules,
|
|
so I won't go into further detail here.
|
|
|
|
If you are using a Linux-v1.3.x kernel, you should consider moving to
|
|
v2.0.x. v1.3.x was the development release prior to the production
|
|
release v2.0.x.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4.4. Installing the driver with v2.1.x and later kernels
|
|
|
|
|
|
(* Maybe ftape-4.02 will be included into the v2.2.x kernel, but this
|
|
isn't clear at the time of this writing. This HOWTO will be revised
|
|
appropriately when this has become clear. So long you have to refer to
|
|
the previous section ``Installing the driver with v2.0.x and earlier
|
|
kernels'' and disregard the contents of this section. *)
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Linux kernel v2.1.x and later already include ftape-4.x so you
|
|
don't need to download the ftape-4.x kernel driver package.
|
|
|
|
ftape-4.x as included in the v2.1.x versions of the kernel can be
|
|
completely configured using the kernel configuration menus (either
|
|
with make menuconfig or make xconfig. Also, there is online help
|
|
available that documents each parameter setting which I won't repeat
|
|
here.
|
|
|
|
The various boot- and loadtime parameter settings are explained in the
|
|
file
|
|
|
|
[/usr/src/linux/]Documentation/ftape.txt
|
|
|
|
of the Linux-v2.1.x and later kernel distributions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4.5. Following the development of the ftape driver
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you want to follow the development of the ftape driver, you should
|
|
subscribe to the Linux Tape mailing list linux-tape@vger.rutgers.edu.
|
|
To do so you need to send an email saying `subscribe linux-tape' (in
|
|
the body) to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu. When you subscribe, you will
|
|
be sent a greeting mail, which will tell you how to submit real mails
|
|
and how to get off the list again. Store this email in a safe place.
|
|
Please.
|
|
|
|
Please note that I do not, repeat DO NOT, have any special powers with
|
|
regard to this mailing list. If you're stuck on the list, don't
|
|
bother to tell me that. I can only shrug and send you my sympathy
|
|
(but that won't get you off the list).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4.6. Mixing ftape and floppies
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you use your floppy tape drive with the standard FDC then the
|
|
floppy drive and the floppy tape drive cannot run concurrently as they
|
|
share the same hardware, the FDC, and the floppy and the ftape driver
|
|
do not talk to each other. Thus, if you have mounted a floppy and
|
|
then try to access the tape drive, ftape will complain that it cannot
|
|
grab IRQ6 and then die. This is especially a problem when designing a
|
|
emergency disk for use with ftape. This solution is to either load
|
|
the boot/root disk into a ramdisk and then unmount the floppy, or have
|
|
two floppy drive controllers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5. The Care and Feeding of Tape and Tape Drives
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5.1. Formatting
|
|
|
|
|
|
Before a tape can be used, it must be formatted. The formatting
|
|
process lays out sector information onto the tape. Other tape
|
|
interfaces don't typically require formatting. The reason floppy
|
|
tapes do is that they need to look like a floppy (kinda gross, but
|
|
what the hey - it works :-).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5.1.1. Can I format my tapes under Linux?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yes, you can, if you use ftape-3.04d or above. To format a floppy tape
|
|
cartridge you need a user level tool called ftformat as well which is
|
|
contained in the ftape-tools distribution (see section ``Getting
|
|
ftape'').
|
|
|
|
The ftape-tools package comes with its own manual, so I do not need to
|
|
repeat here how to use ftformat.
|
|
|
|
|
|
5.1.2. Which formatting programs can I use under DOS?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The following are known to work:
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Colorado Memory System's software (tape.exe)
|
|
|
|
o Conner Backup Basics v1.1 and all Windows versions
|
|
|
|
o Norton Backup
|
|
|
|
o QICstream version 2
|
|
|
|
o Tallgrass FileSecure v1.52
|
|
|
|
o Escom Powerstream 3.0 (qs3.exe -- QICstream v3?)
|
|
|
|
These programs are known to be more or less buggy:
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Conner Backup Basics 1.0
|
|
|
|
o Colorado Windows tape program
|
|
|
|
o CP Backup (wastes tape space, but is OK apart from that)
|
|
|
|
As a general rule, most software under DOS should work. The Conner
|
|
Backup Basics v1.0 has a parameter off by one (someone could not read
|
|
the QIC-80 specs right!), which is corrected in version 1.1. However,
|
|
ftape detects this, and will work around it. Dennis T. Flaherty
|
|
(<dennisf@denix.elk.miles.com>) report that Conner C250MQ owners can
|
|
obtain the new v1.1, by calling Conner at 1-800-4Conner (in the US)
|
|
and ask for an upgrade (for a nominal fee for the floppy). The
|
|
Windows versions should work fine. Some versions of Colorado's tape
|
|
program for windows, has an off-by-one error in the number of
|
|
segments. ftape also detect and work around that bug.
|
|
|
|
Central Point Backup can be used, but it wastes precious tape space
|
|
when it encounters a bad spot on the tape.
|
|
|
|
NOTE: If you are running a formatting software under DOS, which is not
|
|
mentioned here, please mail the relevant info to me
|
|
(<heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de>), so I can update the list.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5.2. Retensioning
|
|
|
|
|
|
QIC tapes are particularly sensitive to tape stretch. The reason is
|
|
that floppy tapes are pre-formatted with sector information, whereas
|
|
other tape types have their sync information written as the data is
|
|
written to the tape. If the floppy tape stretches and the sync fields
|
|
get out of sync the result will be read errors. The problem is worse
|
|
with longer tapes.
|
|
|
|
It is a good idea to retension new tapes a few times before using them
|
|
and before formatting them. You should also try retensioning the tape
|
|
if you are start getting read errors. It might also be a good idea
|
|
retension the tape before a backup.
|
|
|
|
|
|
5.3. Drive Cleaning
|
|
|
|
|
|
The coating on the tape is an oxide compound. As the tape is dragged
|
|
across the tape head it has a tendency to leave tiny amounts of
|
|
residue on the head. You should periodically use a tape cleaner -
|
|
following the specs for the drive in question. Tape cleaners should
|
|
be available from any distributer of tapes.
|
|
|
|
One more additional note about tape cleaning. You might want to clean
|
|
the drive after the first use of a brand new tape. A brand new tape
|
|
will typically leave quite a bit of residue the first time it's used.
|
|
|
|
Thanks to Neal Friedman for the explanation and suggestion that this
|
|
information be included in the HOWTO.
|
|
|
|
|
|
5.4. Repairing de-spooled cartridges
|
|
|
|
|
|
In rare occasions it can happen that the tape drive doesn't detect the
|
|
EOT (End Of Tape) markers correctly. These markers are simply holes in
|
|
the tape which are detected by the tape drive with means of a little
|
|
photo-transistor (or the like).
|
|
|
|
The manual of your tape drive will probably give you proper hints how
|
|
to clean those EOT detectors.
|
|
|
|
However, if the EOT detection fails, then the tape drive despooles the
|
|
cartridge because the tape isn't glued to the wheels, but hold by
|
|
friction only.
|
|
|
|
There are detailed instructions how to fix such a despooled tape at
|
|
the Iomega WWW pages at
|
|
|
|
http://www.iomega.com/support/techs/ditto/3006.html
|
|
|
|
and at the Hewlett Packard WWW pages at
|
|
|
|
http://www.hp.com/isgsupport/cms/docs/lpg12020.html
|
|
|
|
If the pages shouldn't be in the exact locations as given above, then
|
|
please try to browse a little bit through the web pages of HP or
|
|
Iomega until you find the needed information.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6. Hardware support
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.1. Supported tape drives
|
|
|
|
|
|
All drives that are both QIC-117 compatible and one of the QIC-40, 80,
|
|
3010, and 3020 standards should work. QIC-WIDE and Travan drives are
|
|
also supported (TR-1 is just QIC-80 with 8mm tapes, while TR-2 and
|
|
TR-3 is a.k.a QIC-3010 and 3020 respectively). Iomega Ditto 2GB and
|
|
Ditto Max drives are supported, too, though they no longer conform to
|
|
the QIC standards in every respect. Some parallel port tape drives are
|
|
supported as well.
|
|
|
|
Some of the comments given below about possible problems with certain
|
|
tape drives are very old, and I don't have access to all of the
|
|
hardware, so I couldn't check everything.
|
|
|
|
Some of the reports below have been commented by me
|
|
(<heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de>) like this:
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is a comment.
|
|
|
|
Currently, the list of drives that are known to work with ftape is:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Alloy Retriever 250
|
|
|
|
|
|
Archive 5580i, XL9250i
|
|
|
|
|
|
Colorado DJ-10, DJ-20 (aka: Jumbo 120, Jumbo 250)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Colorado 1400
|
|
<kosowsky@bellini.harvard.edu> reported a problem doing a 1G
|
|
backup using taper.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Colorado Trakker parallel port tape drive
|
|
|
|
Support added by Jochen Hoenicke
|
|
<Jochen.Hoenicke@Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE>.
|
|
|
|
|
|
HP Colorado T1000
|
|
|
|
The problem reports are probably totally out-dated. In
|
|
particular, the zftape the people talk about doesn't
|
|
exist any more, and the ftape driver is the very
|
|
ftape-2.08.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Works with 3M Travan 400M (TR-1) tapes with 120M tapes. Also
|
|
reported that mt dies, but with backups using tar it works ok.
|
|
With cpio, ftape is recommended rather than zftape.
|
|
(<millner@millner.bevc.blacksburg.va.us>)
|
|
|
|
Problems have been reported with the drive continually stopping and
|
|
starting with zftape (<75104.1756@compuserve.com>). This appears
|
|
to be a problem with the tape going too fast for the computer; the
|
|
DMA buffers are getting flushed before getting filled again. Newer
|
|
versions of zftape don't do this any more is a suitably fast backup
|
|
program or large DMA buffers are used
|
|
(<millner@millner.bevc.blacksburg.va.us>).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conner C250MQ(T)
|
|
The 250Q is reported to generate write error and frequent
|
|
repositioning. (Frank Stuess at Nacamar Data Communications)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Write errors need not be caused by the tape drive, but
|
|
also by bad tape cartridges. Frequent repositioning can
|
|
be caused by bad cartridges, too, but can also be caused
|
|
by overrun errors which would indicate that the FDC and
|
|
DMA controller have problems to talk to each other.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conner TSM420R, TSM850R
|
|
The 400 and 800 models only work with TR-1 tapes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
I don't know whether it was meant that named drives
|
|
doesn't work with ordinary 120MB DC-2120 cartridges, or
|
|
that TR-3 tapes can't be read. The tape drives weren't
|
|
designed for the latter. So what.
|
|
Conner TST3200R
|
|
Works with TR-3 tapes at 1Mbps (ie. 1600M capacity only). Wirks
|
|
with QIC-WIDE 400M tapes (Sony 5122's?) (<chris@cs.wmich.edu>).
|
|
Works with TR3, QIC-3010, and QIC-3020 tapes. Comes with a 2MB
|
|
FDC which the Promise 2300+ 1Mbps controller works
|
|
(<kjh@pollux.usc.edu>).
|
|
|
|
Reported that the floppy disk can no longer read low-density
|
|
floppies. May have to fiddle with IRQ/ports/dma channels
|
|
(<chris@yakkocs.wmich.edu>).
|
|
|
|
|
|
The TST3200R works well with ftape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conner TST800R
|
|
The TST800R works with TR-1, Sony QW5122F (210M) and DC2120
|
|
tapes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Works well with ftape since ftape-2.07 at least. Used it
|
|
myself until the drive died with a melted transistor.
|
|
Probably caused by over-heating it previously.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conner CTT3200
|
|
|
|
The CTT3200 is supposedly identical to the Iomega Ditto 3200.
|
|
It works with the supplied 2Mbps controller, but reported not to
|
|
work under DOS on some machines. (<jmorris@dtx.net>)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conner 1.7G Tapestor (TSM1700R)
|
|
|
|
Works with QIC-WIDE tapes (<pschmidt@slip.net>). Partially
|
|
works with QIS-3200. Using the HSC-2 controller, the DMA
|
|
channel needs to be changed (incremented by 1, channel2?, Modify
|
|
the Makefile). You then need to modify the ftape Makefile to
|
|
reflect this change. However, ftape seems to be a bit flaky
|
|
with this (no version number supplied) (<ttait@tiac.net>). It
|
|
may not work at 2Mbps (QIC-3020) with the HSC controller. The
|
|
tape died with a messages like "dumb tape stop" and has since
|
|
been unreliable (<ttait@tiac.net>).
|
|
|
|
|
|
No recent informations available
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Escom or Archive (Hornet) 31250Q
|
|
|
|
|
|
Exabyte EXB-1500
|
|
Work with QIC-3010 tapes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Exabyte TR-3
|
|
|
|
Irwin 80SX, Insight 80Mb
|
|
|
|
|
|
Iomega 250
|
|
|
|
|
|
Iomega Ditto Tape Insider 420, 1700
|
|
|
|
|
|
Iomega Ditto Tape Insider 3200
|
|
This is the unit, that I use. The default jumper settings don't
|
|
work. Leave the irq and ioport address at the default (6 and
|
|
0x370, respectfully), but change the DMA from 3 to 2. (Kevin
|
|
Johnson <kjj@pobox.com>).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Refer to the file MCONFIG of recent ftape distributions
|
|
for other suggestions for ioport, irq and DMA channel.
|
|
|
|
|
|
May require the having {0x08882, 80, wake_up_colorado, "Iomega
|
|
3200"}, added to vendors.h on older versions of ftape.
|
|
|
|
Problems reported with ftape 2.07 and kernel 1.12.13. With all
|
|
sorts of combinations of accelerator, etc, the drive may (on some
|
|
systems) only be accessed once (<erwin@box.nl>). Also, after the
|
|
first access, the next use of the tape says it is write protected
|
|
(<erwin@box.nl>, <M.J.Ammerlaan@dutiwy.twi.tudelft.nl>).
|
|
|
|
There has been one report of a problem where the tape got wound off
|
|
the end of the spool.
|
|
|
|
|
|
This may be caused by a dirty EOT sensor, and need not be
|
|
a real hardware bug (except when it was a bug that dirt-
|
|
ied the EOT sensor ...)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Another problem has been reported with writing archives (with dd)
|
|
to the tape. It may start fine, but when the driver catches up
|
|
with dd, it stops the tape and rewinds it to the beginning. Then
|
|
it starts winding on through the tape ad infinitum. It appears to
|
|
occur when the driver asks the tape to pause which should cause the
|
|
tape to move back by 3 segments, but instead is moves back to the
|
|
beginning of the tape. A bug fix submitted is reported to not
|
|
solve the problem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Should have been fixed somewhere between ftape-3.00 and
|
|
ftape-4.00. Unluckily, the fast-skipping facilities of
|
|
all Iomega floppy tape drives are really poor. Recent
|
|
ftape versions work around this problem. I suggest get-
|
|
ting the latest version of the ftape driver when you
|
|
experience this problem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Iomega Ditto 800 Insider
|
|
Works with Travan TR1, TR2, or DC2120 tapes
|
|
(<klein@informatik.uni-rostock.de>).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Iomega Ditto 2GB
|
|
Support added by Jochen Hoenicke
|
|
<Jochen.Hoenicke@Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE> to ftape-3.xx and
|
|
later.
|
|
|
|
Can't format cartridges, writing is only possible with special
|
|
Ditto 2GB cartridges (hardware limitation, not a lacking feature
|
|
of ftape).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Iomega Ditto Max
|
|
|
|
Iomega Ditto Max Pro
|
|
Supported since ftape-4.00. Thanks to Tim Jones
|
|
<tjones@estinc.com>.
|
|
|
|
Can't format cartridges, writing is only possible with special
|
|
Ditto Max cartridges (hardware limitation, not a lacking feature
|
|
of ftape)
|
|
|
|
I wasn't able to get the Ditto Max to work with any other device
|
|
than /dev/[n]qft0. I don't know whether this is a feature of the
|
|
Ditto Max or the Ditto EZ controller I had plugged the Ditto Max
|
|
into.
|
|
|
|
(* You don't need to buy a Ditto Max Pro to use the 5/10GB
|
|
cartridges. With ftape there is no real difference between the
|
|
Ditto Max and the Ditto Max Pro. *)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Iomega Ditto 800/3200/2GB/Max/Max Pro Easy (parallel port)
|
|
Supported since ftape-4.00 with the bpck-fdc FDC driver.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mountain FS8000
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reveal TB1400
|
|
|
|
Reported not to work with kernel 1.3.79 and ftape (no version
|
|
given) or with kernel 1.2.13 and zftape 1.04
|
|
(<colin@colina.demon.co.uk>).
|
|
|
|
|
|
The mentioned ftape driver versions are out of date. If
|
|
you still have such a beast try the more recent versions
|
|
of the ftape driver.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Summit SE 150, SE 250
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tallgrass FS300
|
|
If you have a Tallgrass FS300 and an AHA1542B, you need to
|
|
increase the bus-on / bus-off time of the 1542B. Antti Virjo
|
|
(<klanvi@uta.fi>), says that changing CMD_BUSON_TIME to 4 and
|
|
CMD_BUSOFF_CMD to 12 in linux/drivers/scsi/aha1542.c will do the
|
|
trick.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Teac 800
|
|
|
|
|
|
Memorex tape drive backup system
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wangtek 3040F, 3080F
|
|
|
|
|
|
You can always check out the newest list of drives that are recognised
|
|
by ftape, by looking in the file vendors.h in the ftape distribution.
|
|
|
|
Although I do not want to endorse one drive type over another, it has
|
|
been reported that the Colorado DJ-20 drive is rather noisy, when
|
|
compared to, say, a Conner C250MQ drive ('tis said that the Colorado
|
|
is 5-10 times as noisy as the Conner drive. Since I have neither, I
|
|
can't tell for sure).
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you have a drive that works fine, but it is not listed
|
|
here, or if you have corrections to the above information,
|
|
please send a mail to the HOWTO maintainer
|
|
(<heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de>).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.2. Supported special controllers
|
|
|
|
|
|
These dedicated high-speed tape controllers are supported by ftape:
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Colorado FC-10, FC-20
|
|
|
|
o Mountain MACH-2
|
|
|
|
o Iomega Tape Accelerator II
|
|
|
|
o 2Mbps controllers (using the i82078-1 fdc)
|
|
|
|
o Iomega Ditto EZ 4Mbps PnP controller
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.2.1. Colorado FC-10, FC-20
|
|
|
|
|
|
Support for the FC-10 controller has been merged into the ftape driver
|
|
in version 1.12. See the RELEASE-NOTES and the Makefile files in the
|
|
ftape distribution. Since of version 2.03 of ftape, the FC-20
|
|
controller will work, but only at 1Mbit/sec (check the Release
|
|
notes!).
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.2.2. Mountain MACH-2
|
|
|
|
|
|
The support for the MACH-2 controller was added in ftape-1.14d.
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.2.3. Iomega Tape Accelerator II
|
|
|
|
|
|
To use the Iomega Tape Accelerator II (not to be mistaken as the
|
|
Iomega Ditto Dash!), use -DMACH2, and set the right settings for I/O
|
|
base, IRQ and DMA. This works (by the empirical testing of Scott
|
|
Bailey <sbailey@xcc.mc.xerox.com>), with at least ftape-2.02.
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.2.4. Iomega Ditto Dash and other 2Mbps controllers
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Iomega Ditto Dash, and all other known 2Mbps controllers, use the
|
|
Intel 82078-1 chip, which can run at 2Mbps. This is supported properly
|
|
since ftape-3.00.
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.2.5. Iomega Ditto EZ PnP controller
|
|
|
|
|
|
This controller requires the use of e.g. the isapnptools package to
|
|
configure it. You may get it from
|
|
http://www.roestock.demon.co.uk/isapnptools/
|
|
|
|
The controller will cause too many overrun errors when used at the
|
|
highest possible speed of 4Mbps. Neither Tim Jones <tjones@estinc.com>
|
|
nor I <heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de> have been able to find but a single
|
|
system which could run the controller at 4Mbps. 3Mbps seems to be
|
|
fine.
|
|
|
|
If you configure the Ditto EZ to use DMA 2 (the DMA channel used by
|
|
the floppy controller) then your floppy drive will no longer work. It
|
|
doesn't help to disable the controllers DMA gate (as is the case with
|
|
other hight speed controllers) so this can't be helped from inside
|
|
ftape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.3. Unsupported tape drives
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Some parallel port floppy tape drives still not work. Others do.
|
|
|
|
o Irwin AX250L / Accutrak 250. (not a QIC-80 drive)
|
|
|
|
o IBM Internal Tape Backup Unit (identical to the Irwin AX250L drive)
|
|
|
|
o COREtape light
|
|
|
|
The Irwin AX250L (and the IBM Internal Tape Backup Unit) does not work
|
|
the ftape. This is because they only support QIC-117, but not the
|
|
QIC-80 standard (they use Irwin's proprietary ``servoe (Rhomat)''
|
|
format). I know nothing about the Rhomat format, nor where to get any
|
|
info on it. Sorry.
|
|
|
|
The COREtape light does not accept the initialisation commands, we're
|
|
feeding it. This pretty much leaves the drive unusable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.4. Using an external tape drive with ftape
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you have a floppy controller which has a female DB37 connector on
|
|
the bracket (and some means of delivering power to the drive), you can
|
|
use it with ftape. OK, that sentence was not very obvious. Let's try
|
|
it this way: Some FDC's (the very ancient one's), have a DB37
|
|
connector on the bracket, for connecting to external floppy drives.
|
|
|
|
If you make a suitable cable from the DB37 connector (on the FDC) to
|
|
your external tape drive, you can get ftape to control your tape
|
|
drive.
|
|
|
|
This is because that from a program's view there is no difference
|
|
between the internal and the external connectors. So, from ftape's
|
|
point of view, they are identical.
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Pins 20-37: GROUND
|
|
|
|
o 1: +12 Volt (POWER)
|
|
|
|
o 2: +12 Volt return (GROUND)
|
|
|
|
o 3: +5 Volt return (GROUND)
|
|
|
|
o 4: +5 Volt (POWER)
|
|
|
|
|
|
o 5: 2
|
|
|
|
o 6: 8
|
|
|
|
o 7: 10
|
|
|
|
o 8: 12
|
|
|
|
o 9: 14
|
|
|
|
o 10: 16
|
|
|
|
o 11: 18
|
|
|
|
o 12: 20
|
|
|
|
o 13: 22
|
|
|
|
o 14: 24
|
|
|
|
o 15: 26
|
|
|
|
o 16: 28
|
|
|
|
o 17: 30
|
|
|
|
o 18: 32
|
|
|
|
o 19: 34
|
|
|
|
The power connector is of the "mini" type, sitting on 3.5" floppy
|
|
drives. The idea appears to be that you plug one of the power
|
|
connectors from the PSU to this connector on the board. If you want
|
|
to use just a single cable, you might want to get a 50 wire cable, and
|
|
use multiple wires for the power lines (and ground, for that matter).
|
|
|
|
I have received no confirmation from anyone that this works. Let me
|
|
know your results if you try it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.5. PCI motherboards and ftape
|
|
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately, some PCI motherboards cause problems when running
|
|
ftape. Some people have experienced that ftape would not run in a PCI
|
|
based box, but ran flawlessly in a normal ISA based 386DX machine. If
|
|
you have such a problem, please read the README.PCI file in the ftape
|
|
distribution.
|
|
|
|
|
|
A floppy disk controller needs the ISA bus DMA controller
|
|
for its memory transfers. Seemingly the ISA DMA controller
|
|
doesn't get control over the memory bus often enough on some
|
|
PCI based systems.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7. Backing up and restoring data
|
|
|
|
|
|
This section describes some simple uses of tar and mt. Other examples
|
|
can be found in the ftape-manual of the ftape-doc package. The ftape-
|
|
tools contains some simple automated DejaGnu (-- Package for writing
|
|
automated tests.--)
|
|
|
|
test-suites. See section ``Getting ftape'' for informations about
|
|
where to download those additional packages from.
|
|
|
|
|
|
7.1. Writing an archive to a tape
|
|
|
|
|
|
You can use `tar', `dd', `cpio', and `afio'. You will need to use `mt'
|
|
to get the full potential of your tapes and the ftape driver. For a
|
|
start I'd recommend using `tar', as it can archive lots of directories
|
|
and let you pick out separate files from an archive. cpio creates
|
|
smaller archives and is more generally more flexible than tar, but is
|
|
missing some features like volume labels. `afio' creates backups
|
|
where each file is compressed individually and then concatenated.
|
|
This will allow you to access the files ``after'' the point of the
|
|
error. If you use gzipped tar files, all data after the point of the
|
|
error is lost! (to me, this is a pretty good reason for NOT using
|
|
compression on backups). The choice of which is most appropriate
|
|
depends on the situation and the features and malfeatures of each of
|
|
the packages. I recommend taking a look at each package at reviewing
|
|
the options that each provides. It's possible that this HOWTO may
|
|
provide more detail on this subject at some point in the future.
|
|
|
|
There are more links pointing to backup software at http://www-
|
|
math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape/ in the software section of
|
|
that page.
|
|
|
|
To make a backup of your kernel source tree using tar, do this
|
|
(assuming you have the sources in /usr/src/linux):
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
# cd /usr/src
|
|
# tar cf /dev/ftape linux
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This will not compress the files, but gives you a smoother tape run.
|
|
If you want the compression (and you've got tar 1.11.2), you just
|
|
include the -z flag(*), eg: `tar czf /dev/ftape linux'
|
|
|
|
For further instructions on how to use tar, dd and mt look at the man
|
|
pages and the texinfo files that comes with the respective
|
|
distributions.
|
|
|
|
(*) tar assumes that the first argument is options, so the `-' is not
|
|
necessary, i.e. these two commands are the same: `tar xzf /dev/ftape'
|
|
and `tar -xzf /dev/ftape'
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7.2. Restoring an archive
|
|
|
|
|
|
OK, let us restore the backup of the kernel source you made in section
|
|
``Writing an archive to a tape'' above. To do this you simply say
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar xf /dev/ftape
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you used compression, you will have to say
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar xzf /dev/ftape
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
When you use compression, gzip will complain about trailing garbage
|
|
after the very end of the archive (and this will lead to a `broken
|
|
pipe' message). This can be safely ignored.
|
|
|
|
For the other utilities, please read the man page.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7.3. Testing the archive
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar has an option (-d) for detecting differences between two archives.
|
|
To test your backup of the kernel source say
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar df /dev/ftape
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you do not have the man page for tar, you are not lost (yet); tar
|
|
has a built-in option list: try `tar --help 2>&1 | less'
|
|
|
|
|
|
7.4. Putting more than one backup on a tape
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
To put more than one backup on a tape you must have the mt utility.
|
|
You will probably have it already, if you got one of the mainline
|
|
distributions (eg. Slackware or Debian).
|
|
|
|
Programs like tar and cpio generate a single Tape ARchive and know
|
|
nothing about multiple files or positioning of a tape, it just reads
|
|
or writes from/to a device. mt knows everything about moving the tape
|
|
back and forth, but nothing about reading the data off the tape. As
|
|
you might have guessed, combining tar or cpio with mt does the trick.
|
|
|
|
By using the nqft[0-3] (nftape) device, you can use `mt' to position
|
|
the tape the correct place (`mt -f /dev/nqft0 fsf 2' means step over
|
|
two ``file marks'', i.e. tar files) and then use tar or cpio to read
|
|
or write the relevant data.
|
|
|
|
The most common use of the non-rewinding device is to append another
|
|
backup to an existing tape. Here are the specific steps with a little
|
|
explanation thrown in for good measure.
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Insert a tape into the drive. On some devices this may cause the
|
|
tape to be rewound.
|
|
|
|
o Issue an End-of-Tape command to the NON-rewinding device.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/n???? eof
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The tape should now be positioned at the End-of-Data (EOD). The tape
|
|
won't move unless a program opens the device, closes the rewinding
|
|
device, removes the device driver from kernel memory (rmmod) or ejects
|
|
the tape. Using `mt eof' may be faster on QIC tapes.
|
|
|
|
o The next tape operation will start at the EOD mark. If you perform
|
|
a write, it will append a new `file'. If you perform a read it
|
|
will fail with EOF. The EOD mark on most tape formats is actually
|
|
two consecutive EOF marks, however, since version 3.xx ftape uses
|
|
the volume table as specified in the QIC-113 standard to emulate
|
|
file marks, thus there aren't two consecutive file marks at EOD.
|
|
Writing the EOF marks is handled by either the device driver or the
|
|
hardware when a close() is performed.
|
|
|
|
o Here's where you write the actual data to the tape.
|
|
|
|
o Here's the important part. Now rewind the tape. Both ftape caches
|
|
some information that belongs in the header segments on the tape
|
|
and update those header segments only when the tape is rewound.
|
|
This caching is necessary because rewinding the tape and updating
|
|
the header segments takes a conspicuous amount of time. The
|
|
drawback of this caching is that you will lose information if you
|
|
have written to the tape and not rewound the device.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7.5. Appending files to an archive
|
|
|
|
|
|
``Is there a way to extend an archive -- put a file on the tape, then
|
|
later, add more to the tape?''
|
|
|
|
No. The tar documentation will tell you to use `tar -Ar', but it does
|
|
not work. This is a limitation of the current ftape driver.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7.6. Mount/unmounting tapes
|
|
|
|
|
|
Since a tape does not have a ``filesystem'' on it, you do not mount /
|
|
unmount the tape. To backup, you just insert the tape and run your
|
|
`tar' command (or whatever you use to access the tape with).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
8. Creating an emergency boot floppy for ftape
|
|
|
|
|
|
(* As of the time of this writing (August 1998) I remember that I have
|
|
read about several emergency disk sets in the c.o.l.a
|
|
(comp.os.linux.announce) news group since the time this section has
|
|
been written. Some of those packages actually might produce rather
|
|
sophisticated emergency boot floppy sets. Please check out yourself.
|
|
I didn't try to create an emergency boot floppy with recent versions
|
|
of ftape. *)
|
|
|
|
This section was written by Claus Toendering <ct@login.dknet.dk>.
|
|
|
|
Once you are the happy owner of a tape drive and several tapes full of
|
|
backups, you will probably ask yourself this question: ``If everything
|
|
goes wrong, and I completely lose my hard disk, how do I restore my
|
|
files from tape?''
|
|
|
|
What you need is an emergency floppy disk that contains enough files
|
|
to enable you to boot Linux and restore your hard disk from tape.
|
|
|
|
The first thing you should do is to read ``The Linux Bootdisk HOWTO''
|
|
written by Graham Chapman <grahamc@zeta.org.au>. That document tells
|
|
you almost everything you need to know about making an emergency
|
|
floppy boot kit. The paragraphs below contain a few extra pieces of
|
|
information that will make your life a bit easier when you follow
|
|
Graham Chapman's procedures:
|
|
|
|
|
|
o You don't really need /etc/init, /etc/inittab, /etc/getty, and
|
|
/etc/rc.d/* on your floppy disk. If Linux doesn't find /etc/init,
|
|
it will start /bin/sh on your console, which is fine for restoring
|
|
your system. Deleting these files gives you extra space on your
|
|
floppy, which you will probably need.
|
|
|
|
o Find a small version of /bin/sh. They are frequently available on
|
|
the boot floppies that come with a Linux distribution. This again
|
|
will give you extra space. I'd suggest ash, which is extremely
|
|
small (approx 62Kbytes), and yet very bash compatible.
|
|
|
|
o The /etc/fstab you include on your floppy disk should look
|
|
something like this:
|
|
|
|
|
|
/dev/fd0 / minix defaults
|
|
none /proc proc defaults
|
|
/dev/hda /mnt ext2 defaults
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Once you have booted from your floppy, give the command:
|
|
|
|
|
|
mount -av
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Make sure your floppy drive is not mounted when you access the
|
|
streamer tape! Otherwise you may get the following error message:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Unable to grab IRQ6 for ftape driver
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This means that you MUST load the floppy into a RAMDISK.
|
|
|
|
This has the unfortunate consequence that the programs needed to
|
|
restore the files from the tape can not be located on a separate
|
|
floppy disk. You have two options here:
|
|
|
|
1. You place tar (or cpio or afio or whatever other backup program
|
|
you use) on your root floppy disk. (This is where you'll need
|
|
all the extra space created in the steps above.)
|
|
|
|
2. Before you start restoring from tape, copy tar (or cpio or afio
|
|
or whatever) to your hard disk and load it from there.
|
|
|
|
o Apart from your backup program, you will probably need mt on your
|
|
root floppy as well.
|
|
|
|
o Make sure your ftape device (typically /dev/nqft0) is present on
|
|
your boot floppy.
|
|
|
|
o Finally: TRY IT OUT! Of course, I don't recommend that you destroy
|
|
your hard disk contents to see if you are able to restore
|
|
everything. What I do recommend, however, is that you try booting
|
|
from your emergency disks and make sure that you can at least make
|
|
a file listing of the contents of your backup tape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
9. Frequently Asked Questions
|
|
|
|
|
|
(* This is the literal inclusion of the Ftape Frequently Asked
|
|
questions collection which is maintained by Johan De Wit
|
|
<jo@correct.nl> and which may be viewed on the web at
|
|
http://www.correct.nl/~ftape. As Linuxdoc SGML doesn't include sub-
|
|
sub-sections into the table of contents, I have prepended the word FAQ
|
|
to the sections of the original FAQ document. *)
|
|
|
|
This FAQ collection might be slightly out of data as it was collected
|
|
while version 3.04d of the ftape driver was the newest one. If any
|
|
answer given in the FAQ contradicts any other statement of this HOWTO,
|
|
then please disregard the answer in the FAQ and drop me
|
|
(<heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de>) as well as the maintainer of the Ftape-
|
|
FAQ (Johan De Wit <jo@correct.nl>) a note
|
|
|
|
|
|
You might encounter references to the following addresses while
|
|
reading this document:
|
|
|
|
|
|
o The maintainer of the Ftape FAQ :
|
|
|
|
Johan De Wit <jo@correct.nl>
|
|
|
|
o The Ftape maintainer :
|
|
|
|
Claus-Justus Heine <claus@momo.math.rwth-aachen.de>
|
|
|
|
o The Ftape Home Page :
|
|
|
|
<http://www-math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape/>
|
|
|
|
o Mirrors of the Ftape Home Page :
|
|
|
|
<http://www.torque.net/ftape/>
|
|
|
|
Thanks to Grant R. Guenther <grant@torque.net>
|
|
|
|
<http://www.info-systems.com/ftape/>
|
|
|
|
Thanks to Jakob Curdes <jc@info-systems.com>
|
|
|
|
<http://www.newwave.net/~joshg/ftape/>
|
|
|
|
Thanks to Josh Goins <joshg@newwave.net>
|
|
|
|
|
|
o The Ftape HOWTO :
|
|
|
|
<http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO>
|
|
|
|
o The Ftape Mailing List :
|
|
|
|
<linux-tape@vger.rutgers.edu>
|
|
|
|
|
|
There is surely quite a lot missing. Please feel free to improve this
|
|
FAQ. The preferred way of doing this is to post to the Ftape Mailing
|
|
List in case you have a question that isn't answered here.
|
|
|
|
Also, if you are already reading the list regularly and have the
|
|
impression that some questions occur again and again, feel free to
|
|
send that question and possibly an answer in the format indicated
|
|
below to the maintainer of the Ftape FAQ AND to Ftape Mailing List.
|
|
|
|
If you make FAQ related postings, then please DON'T FORGET to prepend
|
|
the word "[FAQ]" to the subject of your posting. Please don't add the
|
|
word "FAQ" to the subject if you post something that isn't related to
|
|
the FAQ.
|
|
|
|
That's all for now.
|
|
|
|
Claus-Justus Heine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
10. FAQ: "Compiling and installing Ftape" related questions !
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.1. What Ftape version should I use?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Always the latest stable version which is _supposed_ to be available
|
|
from ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes and http://www-
|
|
math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape/
|
|
|
|
At time of this writing the latest stable version is ftape-4.02.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
10.2. I'm having problems getting my XYZ drive to run under the
|
|
2.0.xx kernel with the built-in driver. How do I fix this?
|
|
|
|
|
|
The default version of Ftape included in the 2.0.xx kernel sources is
|
|
2.08 or 2.09 and is very out of date. Please update the Ftape drivers
|
|
to the latest from the Ftape Home Page.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Tim Jones>
|
|
|
|
10.3. I'm running Linux/SMP and the system just freezes when trying
|
|
to access the Ftape devices!
|
|
|
|
|
|
You need to add -D__SMP__ to the KERNEL_OPT variable in the file
|
|
MCONFIG. In newer ftape versions you only need to uncomment a certain
|
|
line in the MCONFIG file.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.4. Why does depmod complain about "undefined symbols"?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ignore the depmod error messages. The problem is that the Ftape
|
|
modules have to be compiled without the version checksum feature (i.e.
|
|
CONFIG_MODVERSIONS) with 2.0.* kernels. This causes no problem, even
|
|
when the modules are used with a kernel that has support for this
|
|
feature; only that depmod wrongly complains about undefined symbols.
|
|
Ignore the complaints of depmod and try to insert the modules despite
|
|
of these complaints:
|
|
|
|
|
|
modprobe zftape
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If this fails, something is wrong.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.5. "insmod" says the kernel version is wrong
|
|
|
|
|
|
The insmod program can check the kernel version against the version
|
|
that Ftape was compiled for in two ways: It can directly compare the
|
|
kernel version number recorded in the Ftape module against the version
|
|
of the running kernel, or, if both the kernel and Ftape is compiled
|
|
with versioned symbols, compare the version of the used kernel
|
|
symbols.
|
|
|
|
If you have upgraded your version of GCC to v2.7.0 or later, you must
|
|
recompile the modules utilities with gcc v2.7.x.
|
|
|
|
Newer versions of insmod allows you to "force" insertion of a module
|
|
into the kernel, even though the version string is incorrect.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.6. "insmod" says that kernel 1.2.0 and 1.2.0 differ
|
|
|
|
|
|
Did you remember to apply the ksyms.c patch to the kernel? If not,
|
|
read the README.linux-1.2 file in the source distribution.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.7. Trying to compile Ftape gives me the error "modversions.h: no
|
|
such file or directory"
|
|
|
|
|
|
The modversions.h file is created when the kernel is compiled with the
|
|
configuration item CONFIG_MODVERSIONS turned on. With this option
|
|
enabled, the file will be created during the make dep step.
|
|
|
|
One more handy tip is that a make mrproper will remove
|
|
/usr/include/linux/modversions.h. You will need to reconfig the
|
|
kernel and do a make dep to get the file back.
|
|
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.8. What is this versioned symbols stuff anyway?
|
|
|
|
|
|
When you say `yes' to CONFIG_MODVERSIONS during `make config', all the
|
|
symbols exported by the kernel, i.e: the symbols that the loadable
|
|
modules can "see", are augmented to include a checksum across the
|
|
types of the call/return parameters. This allows insmod to detect
|
|
whether the definition of a variable or function in the kernel has
|
|
changed since the time when Ftape was compiled.
|
|
|
|
This ensures a high degree of safety, such that you do not crash the
|
|
kernel because you used an outdated module with your kernel.
|
|
|
|
If you enable CONFIG_MODVERSIONS in the kernel, make sure you have
|
|
|
|
-DMODVERSIONS -include /usr/include/linux/modversions.h
|
|
|
|
|
|
uncommented in the MODULE_OPT line in the Ftape Makefile. Conversely,
|
|
if you do not have CONFIG_MODVERSIONS enabled, make sure you have it
|
|
commented out.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.9. I seem to be getting sftape instead of zftape. When I run "ftmt
|
|
status" command, I get output that the Ftape docs says corresponds to
|
|
sftape ( /dev/qft0: Invalid argument ). Why?
|
|
|
|
|
|
There are (at least) two possible sources of the problem:
|
|
|
|
o All Ftape-3.* versions prior to 3.04 install the modules into
|
|
|
|
|
|
/lib/modules/misc
|
|
instead of
|
|
/lib/modules/uname -r/misc
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As modprobe searches in /lib/modules/misc/ last there might be an old
|
|
ftape.o module floating around in /lib/modules/ uname -r/misc which
|
|
modprobe finds first (uname -r stands for the kernel version). Remove
|
|
the old ftape.o module.
|
|
|
|
o Your kernel has support for Ftape compiled in. Reconfigure your
|
|
kernel without support for Ftape (CONFIG_FTAPE) and recompile and
|
|
install it.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heins>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.10. My Ditto DASH/FC-20/Exabyte Accelerator card works under
|
|
Microsoft Windows, but I get a drive not found type of error in
|
|
/var/log/messages when trying to use it under Linux.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You are probably trying to use the same IRQ and DMA settings as your
|
|
on-board FDC. This does not work in versions of Ftape prior to 3.03b.
|
|
Please update the Ftape Drivers to the latest from the Ftape Home
|
|
Page.
|
|
<answer from Tim Jones>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.11. Ftape DMA transfers gives ECC errors
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sadly to say there are some SVGA cards and Ethernet cards that do not
|
|
decode their addresses correct. This typically happens when the Ftape
|
|
buffers are in the range 0x1a0000 to 0x1c0000. Somehow, the DMA write
|
|
cycles get clobbered and every other byte written gets a bad value
|
|
(0xff). These problems are reported to happen with both SVGA and
|
|
Ethernet cards. We know of at least one (bad?) ATI 16bit VGA card
|
|
that caused this.
|
|
|
|
The easiest solution is to put the card in an 8bit slot (it is often
|
|
not enough to reconfigure the card to 8bit transfers). Moving the
|
|
Ftape buffer away from the VGA range is only a partial solution; All
|
|
DMA buffers used in Linux can have this problem! Let us make this one
|
|
clear: This has nothing to do with the Ftape software.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.12. Help! I'm getting 'dmaalloc() failed' in my syslog file.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You should only see this is you are trying to insmod the ftape.o
|
|
module. Try running swapout first. It is provided with the
|
|
standalone Ftape source. It doesn't appear in the Ftape source that's
|
|
provided with the kernel.
|
|
|
|
Here's an example of how you can set your rc.local file to use it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
# Install the Floppy Tape Driver
|
|
if [ -f /boot/modules/`uname -r`/misc/ftape.o ]; then
|
|
echo Installing ftape for Linux `uname -r`
|
|
swapout
|
|
insmod /boot/modules/`uname -r`/misc/ftape.o
|
|
fi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Please note that you won't have this type of problem if you compile
|
|
the Ftape driver into the kernel.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.13. Syslogd works overtime when running Ftape
|
|
|
|
|
|
The compile-time options NO_TRACE and NO_TRACE_AT_ALL in Ftape control
|
|
the amount of system logging. Add whichever is appropriate to the
|
|
FTAPE_OPT line in the Makefile and recompile.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.14. How do I change the trace-level?
|
|
|
|
|
|
There are three ways you can do this (in order of personal
|
|
preference).
|
|
While we're at it, here are the meanings of the various trace levels.
|
|
|
|
|
|
o 0 Bugs
|
|
|
|
o 1 + Errors
|
|
|
|
o 2 + Warnings
|
|
|
|
o 3 + Information
|
|
|
|
o 4 + More information
|
|
|
|
o 5 + Program flow
|
|
|
|
o 6 + FDC/DMA info
|
|
|
|
o 7 + Data flow
|
|
|
|
o 8 + Everything else
|
|
|
|
|
|
1. Using insmod to change trace-level
|
|
|
|
If you are using the modules mechanism to load the Ftape driver,
|
|
you can specify the tracing level as an option to the insmod
|
|
command.
|
|
|
|
|
|
/sbin/insmod ftape.o tracing=<tracing-level>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2. Using mt to change trace-level
|
|
|
|
The Ftape driver has a hack in it that allows the fsr option in mt
|
|
to be used to set the tracing level. zftape does not have this
|
|
hack.
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/ftape fsr <tracing-level>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The use of the fsr command in mt is a hack, and will probably disap-
|
|
pear or change with time.
|
|
|
|
3. Recompiling to change trace-level
|
|
|
|
The file tracing.c contains a line int tracing = 3;. Change the 3
|
|
to whatever is appropriate and recompile.
|
|
|
|
<From the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
10.15. I'm having problems with Ftape. I'm using the latest version
|
|
of Ftape from the Ftape Home Page and believe that I've located a real
|
|
bug. What should I do?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Check the Ftape Home Page. for an even newer version. Then check the
|
|
FAQ contained in the that package if your problem is listed there.
|
|
Next, try to check if the manual that comes with the Ftape
|
|
distribution mentions your problem.
|
|
There is no need to read the entire manual, simply check the "Concept
|
|
Index" if it contains a keyword that might be related to your problem,
|
|
then jump to the proper location in the manual.
|
|
|
|
If you are still convinced you've found a bug, then post a general
|
|
question describing the problem to the Linux-Tape Mailing List , but
|
|
do not attach your entire Ftape error-log. If we've seen the problem
|
|
before, we'll let you know where the resolution effort stands. If we
|
|
haven't, the Ftape maintainer will most likely request that you send
|
|
him the entire Ftape error-log (snipped from your system messages
|
|
file).
|
|
|
|
<answer from Tim Jones>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11. FAQ: "Using Ftape" related questions !
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.1. How fast is Ftape ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
You can achieve quite respectable backup and restore speeds with
|
|
Ftape: a Colorado DJ-20 and an Adaptec 1542CF controller, has been
|
|
measured at 4.25Mbyte/min sustained data transfer rate (no
|
|
compression) across a 70Mbyte tar archive, while comparing the archive
|
|
on the tape with data on an IDE disk. The speed of Ftape is mostly
|
|
dependent on the data transfer rate of your FDC: The AHA1542CF has a
|
|
``post-1991 82077'' FDC, and it will push 1Mbit/sec at the tape drive.
|
|
If you have an FDC which can only deliver 500Kbit/sec data rates, you
|
|
will see half the transfer rate (well, roughly).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.2. When I write to some of my tapes, they seem to spend a lot of
|
|
time "shoe-shining," or repositioning instead of streaming. Is some-
|
|
thing wrong with my system?
|
|
|
|
|
|
There has been a few reports of "shoeshining". This is when the tape
|
|
just seems to run back and forth endlessly. This has been seen on a
|
|
Jumbo 250 (74407.3051@compuserve.com) and on an Iomega 250 Ditto
|
|
Insider (tom@opus.cais.com). In the latter case it has been narrowed
|
|
own to using an ELF Linux and running off a SCSI hard disk (connected
|
|
to an Adaptec 1542cf). Please contact me if you have an update to
|
|
this problem.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
Probably not. If you are backing up a large number of < 2K files,
|
|
you're just going to have to live with it. In this event, the
|
|
repositions are caused by file system access overhead. If you are
|
|
backing up a normal system's files, this may be caused by slop or
|
|
media stretching in the tape cartridge. By simply retensioning the
|
|
tape, you should see this go away. Try
|
|
|
|
|
|
ftmt -f /dev/zqft0 reten
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
to retension the tape. If retensioning doesn't solve this, and it's
|
|
only happening on certain tapes, it might be wise to replace the tapes
|
|
in question.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Tim Jones>
|
|
|
|
If you use afio as your backup tool you can set it to write a very
|
|
large number of buffers in one hit by using the -c flag. Make it large
|
|
enough so that you supply enough data for most of a single end-to-end
|
|
pass over the tape. For my system, the following streams quite nicely
|
|
- stopping relatively few times per tape pass on an unloaded system:
|
|
|
|
|
|
find /usr/local -xdev -print | afio -o -v -f -b 10240 -c 800 /dev/qft0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In my case I'm writing 800 x 10240 bytes per tape write, i.e. about
|
|
8MB. haven't experimented that much with these settings - so someone
|
|
might like to establish more optimal ones.
|
|
|
|
Presumably other backup utilities could be modified to use a similar
|
|
technique.
|
|
|
|
<answer by Michael Hamilton>
|
|
|
|
GNU tar doesn't use buffering in this way. The commercial backup
|
|
program "bru" is able to multi-buffer using shared memory; this works
|
|
only when writing compressed archive with bru (regardless whether you
|
|
use Ftape's builtin compression)
|
|
|
|
Another way to overcome the problem might be to use more dma buffers
|
|
in the Ftape kernel driver like:
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/qft0 setdrvbuffer $((6*32786))
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
$((6*32786)) should be expanded by your shell when using a Bourne com-
|
|
patible one. This has a negative impact on the system's memory pool:
|
|
Ftape's dma buffers cannot be used by any other part of the kernel nor
|
|
by any other application. And kernel memory cannot be swapped out. If
|
|
you decide to use this kind of multi-buffering then you should unload
|
|
the driver as soon as it isn't needed any longer.
|
|
|
|
<answer by Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.3. Do I have to reboot to the DOS world to format tapes?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Not if you are using the latest version of the Ftape drivers from the
|
|
Ftape Home Page.
|
|
|
|
To format a QIC-80, TR-1, TR-3, QICWide 3010 or 3020 tape, get the
|
|
latest version of ftape and the latest version of the ftape-tools
|
|
package (from the same location) and read the documentation of the
|
|
ftformat utility which is included in the ftape-tools package.
|
|
|
|
(* Do not try to format Ditto 2GB tapes. *)
|
|
|
|
(* Do not try to format Ditto Max or Max Pro tapes. *)
|
|
|
|
<answers from Tim Jones and Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.4. Is it possibly to format Ditto 2GB tapes with ftape?
|
|
|
|
|
|
It isn't possible to format Ditto 2GB tapes with Ditto 2GB tape drive,
|
|
and it isn't possible at all to re-format Ditto 2GB tapes in a way
|
|
that they still can be used by a Ditto 2GB tape drive.
|
|
|
|
This is a hardware limitation of the Ditto 2GB tape drive. It can't be
|
|
helped at the software level, i.e. it isn't ftape's fault.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.5. Is it possibly to format Ditto Max or Max Pro tapes with ftape?
|
|
|
|
|
|
No, the Ditto Max can't format tapes.
|
|
|
|
This is a hardware limitation of the Ditto Max (Pro) tape drive. It
|
|
can't be helped at the software level, i.e. it isn't ftape's fault.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.6. Ftape detects more bad sectors than DOS on QIC-3020 tapes
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you look at the difference, you will notice that Ftape always
|
|
detects 2784 sectors more than DOS.
|
|
|
|
The number that Ftape reports is correct (of course :-). Each
|
|
correctly formatted QIC-3020 tape has 2784 sectors at fixed positions
|
|
that are marked in the bad sector map. To quote from the specs:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tracks 5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25 and 27 within 4 seg-
|
|
ments of either EOT or BOT are prone to increased error
|
|
rates due to hole imprints. Therefore, these regions shall
|
|
be mapped as bad at format time and entered in the bad sec-
|
|
tor map by indicating that all sectors within the identified
|
|
segments are bad.
|
|
|
|
|
|
This gives 12 tracks * 2 * 4 segments * 29 sectors == 2784 sectors.
|
|
|
|
So Ftape choose to report the real number of sectors that cannot be
|
|
used on the tape, while DOS gives a more optimistic number giving a
|
|
better indication of tape quality. (Ftape's behavior might change in
|
|
the future to detect correct formatting and display the separate
|
|
numbers. It has rather low priority though).
|
|
|
|
QIC-3010 are alike QIC-3020 tapes regarding this.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.7. Is it ok that I'm not hearing the tape move when I do a fsf or
|
|
a bsf with mt?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yes. The driver merely updates an internal counter when those
|
|
commands are issues. The tape should move to the proper location on
|
|
the next read or write access to the tape drive.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.8. Why does my XYZ backup program complain about "Invalid argu-
|
|
ment" errors?
|
|
|
|
|
|
zftape requires the data to be written in multiples of a fixed minimal
|
|
block size. This is a very usual behavior for a tape device. There are
|
|
three ways to get rid of those errors:
|
|
|
|
o set Ftape's block size to the block size used by the backup
|
|
program. The example below works for "afio":
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/qft0 setblk 5120
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
o If you don't want to use Ftape's built in compression you can also
|
|
use
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/qft0 setblk 0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
to switch Ftape to variable block size mode and be able to write the
|
|
data in arbitrary portions to the tape (BUT: the builtin compression
|
|
doesn't work with this setting). When you intend to use "KBackup" then
|
|
this is the only way to make it work together with Ftape (it _may_
|
|
work, don't know if it does)
|
|
|
|
o tell your backup program about Ftape's default block size of 10k
|
|
(which is also the default of GNU tar). For "afio" you can use the
|
|
following command line switch:
|
|
|
|
|
|
afio -b 10k ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You may want to read the section "Tape blocks" of the manual (use its
|
|
"Concept index" to directly jump to that section)
|
|
|
|
When using GNU tar's builtin compression with GNU tar versions prior
|
|
to tar-1.12 one needs to run tar with the --block-compress switch to
|
|
re-block the output to the tape. Otherwise tar will compress the data
|
|
it reads, and write it in arbitrary portions to the tape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Example :
|
|
|
|
tar -czvf /dev/qft0 --block-compress /etc
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WARNING: One shouldn't use tar's builtin compression with large
|
|
backups as it makes the entire data stream one huge compressed block.
|
|
If such archives are corrupted right at the beginning it will be very
|
|
difficult to recover.
|
|
|
|
<answer by Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
11.9. I/O errors and FDC - some explanations.
|
|
|
|
|
|
When you get next messages, this could be interesting for you !
|
|
|
|
|
|
o fdc-io.c (ft_handle_perpend) - Your FDC does not support QIC-3020.
|
|
|
|
o Cannot write to /dev/qft0: I/O error
|
|
|
|
The explanations:
|
|
|
|
"FDC" menas "Floppy Disk Controller". The problem is that your floppy
|
|
disk controller must be able to support something that is called
|
|
"perpendicular mode" to be able to read and write QIC-3020/QIC-3010
|
|
cartridges (i.e. TR-3 cartridges). To my knowledge all FDCs that are
|
|
capable of at least 1Mbit/sec data transfer rate also support
|
|
"perpendicular mode" ("perpendicular" refers to the direction of
|
|
magnetization of the ferro-magnetic particles on the tape).
|
|
|
|
This means that you need to purchase another FDC. Either look around
|
|
some computer stores and ask for an IO controller cards that is able
|
|
to support 2.88 Mb floppies (which imlies 1Mbit data transfer rate and
|
|
perpendicular mode).
|
|
|
|
Or get one of the so called "high speed" controllers that even support
|
|
2Mbit/sec data transfer rate. Those controllers are based on an Intel
|
|
82078 FDC. Iomega sells such a card under the name "Ditto Dash". I
|
|
think Exabyte sells their 2Mbit controllers separately, too, whereas
|
|
Seagate ships its TR-3 drives (i.e. the TST-3200) together with such a
|
|
controller.
|
|
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.10. Why do I get "/dev/qft0: No such device" errors?
|
|
|
|
|
|
I assume that the following is the problem: The Ftape module is loaded
|
|
OK into the kernel:
|
|
|
|
|
|
/usr/src/ftape-3.03b-970603# lsmod
|
|
Module Pages Used by
|
|
ftape 22 0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
but then this happens:
|
|
|
|
|
|
$ ftmt -f /dev/qft0 status
|
|
ftmt: /dev/qft0: No such device
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Solution You need to load the zftape.o module as well. With Ftape-3.*
|
|
the ftape.o module doesn't implement the VFS interface. This is done
|
|
by zftape.o.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.11. I get "device busy" when I make multiple backups on a tape
|
|
using some script.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The "device busy" messages can only occur while the Ftape devices are
|
|
still held open by some program. As soon as the close() system call
|
|
has completed the busy flag is cleared. May be "bru" or some other
|
|
program has still forked off a child that dies delayed?
|
|
|
|
Yes, this will reproduce the problem, it seems:
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar -cvvzf /dev/nqft0 --block-compress ; mt rewind
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You can skip the "--block-compress" if using the most recent version
|
|
of GNU tar.
|
|
|
|
However, this is not a bug of Ftape. It seems that the parent tar
|
|
process exits before its child has closed the tape device. I know,
|
|
however, from hacking the tar code ages ago, that tar properly waits
|
|
for its parent to die.
|
|
|
|
However, the busy message simply means that the "busy" variable is
|
|
still held at 1 (zftape/zftape-init.c). And this simply means that
|
|
there still is a process hanging around that holds the tape device
|
|
open.
|
|
|
|
I think I have it (only for the case of tar 'cause I have the source
|
|
code.
|
|
|
|
If on uses tar with compression, then it forks a child which will
|
|
become the compressor bei execing "gzip" or whatever. Before the call
|
|
to execlp() the child will fork off a grand child of its parent tar.
|
|
That grandchild will do the actual tape I/O.
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar - fork() - write to child tar
|
|
|
|
|
child tar - fork() - gzip (will pipe to grand child tar)
|
|
|
|
|
grand child tar - open archive.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Now, parent tar only waits for its child to die. gzip surely doesn't
|
|
wait for the grand child as the gzip is a result of an execlp().
|
|
|
|
What I don't know is whether the grand child should be implicitly
|
|
waited for by the parent tar, or if the wait() function also waits for
|
|
grand childs.
|
|
|
|
But this seems to be the problem: the parent tar already has exited
|
|
while its grandchild still is busy closing the archive. One hardly
|
|
will notice this problem if the close() happens fast (i.e. regular
|
|
files, block devices, also other tape devices?), but it isn't a bug in
|
|
Ftape, but either in the backup programs or in the kernel or maybe
|
|
libc exit code.
|
|
|
|
Don't know if the considerations above also apply to bru. If there is
|
|
no grandchild and the parent process properly waits for its childs
|
|
then there shouldn't be a problem.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.12. How do I "..." with tar?
|
|
|
|
|
|
These are really tar questions: Please read the man page and the info
|
|
page. If you have not got it either, try
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar --help 2>&1 | less
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If your version of tar is v1.11.1 or earlier, consider upgrading to
|
|
v1.11.8 - This version can call GNU zip directly (i.e.: it supports
|
|
the -z option) and has an elaborate help included. Also, it compiles
|
|
right out of the box on Linux.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.13. What block-size should I use with tar ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
When using compression, and in all general, it can be a benefit to
|
|
specify to tar, that it should block the output into chunks. Since
|
|
Ftape cuts things into 29Kbyte blocks, saying `-b58' should be
|
|
optimum.
|
|
|
|
"Why 29Kbyte?", I hear you cry. Well, the QIC-80 standard specifies
|
|
that all data should be protected by an Error Correcting Code (ECC)
|
|
code. The code specified in the QIC-80 standard is known as a Reed-
|
|
Solomon (R-S) code. The R-S code takes 29 data bytes and generates 3
|
|
parity bytes. To increase the performance of the ECC code, the parity
|
|
bytes are generated across 29 1Kbyte sectors. Thus, Ftape takes
|
|
29Kbytes of data, adds 3Kbytes of ECC parity, and writes 32Kbytes to
|
|
the tape at a time. For this reason, Ftape will always read and write
|
|
32K byte blocks to be able to detect (and correct) data errors.
|
|
|
|
If you are curious, and wish to know more, look in the ecc.c and ecc.h
|
|
files, for an explanation of the code and a reference to a textbook on
|
|
Reed-Solomon codes.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.14. Where can I find the tar/mt/cpio/dd binaries - sources - man-
|
|
pages?
|
|
|
|
|
|
All of these tools have been developed by the GNU project, and the
|
|
source (and man page) can be fetched from just-about any ftp site in
|
|
the world (including ftp.funet.fi, tsx-11.mit.edu, and
|
|
sunsite.unc.edu). In any case they can be fetched from the official
|
|
GNU home site: prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38]:/pub/gnu. The latest
|
|
versions (as of September 12 1996) are:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
cpio: 2.4.2 (cpio-2.4.2.tar.gz)
|
|
dd: 3.13 (fileutils-3.13.tar.gz)
|
|
mt: 2.4.2 (cpio-2.4.2.tar.gz)
|
|
tar: 1.11.8 (tar-1.11.8.tar.gz)
|
|
gzip: 1.2.4 (gzip-1.2.4.tar.gz)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
They all compile out of the box on Linux v1.0.4 / libc v4.5.19 / gcc
|
|
v2.5.8.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.15. If I use tapers compression, is it a bad idea to use the com-
|
|
pression with zftape, or would it be better to not use tapers compres-
|
|
sion, and let zftape do it?
|
|
|
|
|
|
It is not bad as such to compress data twice (which would be the case
|
|
when using tapers compression together with zftape's compression) but
|
|
it doesn't make any sense. You won't gain much further compression,
|
|
but only waste CPU cycles.
|
|
|
|
Tapers compression should be quite safe, as taper compresses single
|
|
files; in contrast to tar -czf ... which makes the entire data stream
|
|
a large compressed block of data, which is really a bad thing with
|
|
serious backups as a single bad byte at the beginning of the archive
|
|
can make the entire archive unusable, well, it will be at least quite
|
|
difficult to recover.
|
|
|
|
<Answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.16. How does zftape compression compare to say gzip -9?
|
|
|
|
|
|
gzip -9 is better (i.e. one gains higher compression). zftape's
|
|
compression is comparable with the Un*x compress program, but should
|
|
be faster, and is faster than gzip.
|
|
|
|
<Answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.17. I don't trust compression, but hear that the sftape interface
|
|
is going away. What should I do?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Use the zftape interface, but don't load the zft-compressor module.
|
|
The device then becomes /dev/qft0.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Tim Jones>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.18. Ftape says "This tape has no 'Linux raw format"
|
|
|
|
|
|
You get this complaint if you haven't erased your freshly formatted
|
|
tape. This is because Ftape expect a "magic header" on the tape, to
|
|
be able that it is allowed to interpret the header segment in its own
|
|
way (eg: file marks). To remove the problem, say
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/nftape erase
|
|
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.19. Can I exchange tapes with someone using DOS?
|
|
|
|
|
|
No. The DOS software conforms to the QIC-80 specs about the layout of
|
|
the DOS filesystem, and it should(?) be a small problem to write a
|
|
program that can read/write the DOS format. In fact, I'd bet that
|
|
creating a nice user interface would be a bigger problem.
|
|
|
|
<From the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.20. How does `mt eom' work when you've started overwriting a tape
|
|
in the middle?
|
|
|
|
|
|
(EOM is "End Of recorded Media", the position right after all data
|
|
already recorded to the tape)
|
|
|
|
One cannot use tape "files" like files on an ordinary file system.
|
|
|
|
In principle, a tape doesn't allow anything but appending new data at
|
|
EOM. However, if one positiones just in the middle of the already
|
|
recorded data AND starts writing, then the driver first deletes all
|
|
following files (thus moving the EOM to the actual position) and then
|
|
starts writing.
|
|
|
|
Thus, the new EOM after finishing the write process, is then after the
|
|
newly recorded data.
|
|
|
|
One of the consequences of the above is, of course, that writing to
|
|
the tape in the middle of the already recorded area, is destructive in
|
|
the sense, that it not only overwrites the "file" the tape is
|
|
positioned at, but also deletes all following files.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto> <Answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.21. When I made backups before using taper, under the 2.0.29 ftape
|
|
my drive didn't support fsf, under the new zftape it does, why would
|
|
this be, and what exactly is fsf ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
It probably didn't work before because you didn't use a
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/rft0 erase
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
before writing data to the cartridge. THIS ISN'T necessary any more.
|
|
|
|
But, hey, what does mt fsf? Tape drives don't store files in the sense
|
|
that you can use
|
|
|
|
cp somefile /dev/my_what_ever_tape
|
|
|
|
|
|
or be able to mount the tape drive like you could mount a harddisk.
|
|
You can't do nothing with a tape drive but write data to it in a
|
|
sequential manner.
|
|
|
|
|
|
As this is quite inconvenient, somebody invented something which is
|
|
known under the name file mark or eof mark (eof == End Of File). Those
|
|
marks don't separate files that have been backed up to the tape
|
|
device, but only separate blocks of data (whatever data that might
|
|
be).
|
|
|
|
Normally, the kernel tape device drivers take care of writing file
|
|
marks when the tape device is closed, i.e.
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar -cf /dev/nqft0 /bin
|
|
tar -cf /dev/nqft0 /etc
|
|
mt -f /dev/nqft0 rewind
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
would result in a backup of all files under /bin and /etc. When the
|
|
first tar finishes, the kernel driver will take care of writing a file
|
|
mark to the tape at the the current tape position, and when the second
|
|
tar process has finished, another file mark is written to the tape
|
|
cartridge at that position.
|
|
|
|
Now, the sense of those file marks is, that it is possible to skip
|
|
between different archives on the tape more quickly than would be
|
|
possible with reading the data back.
|
|
|
|
The commands to do that are:
|
|
|
|
mt fsf
|
|
fast skip to the next file mark towards EOT (End Of Tape)
|
|
|
|
mt bsf
|
|
fast skip to the next file marks towards BOT (Begin Of Tape)
|
|
|
|
Thus, to extract the second archive in the example above, one doesn't
|
|
need to read the first archive back, but can proceed as follows:
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/nqft0 rewind
|
|
mt -f /dev/nqft0 fsf
|
|
tar -xvf /dev/nqft0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
<Answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.22. What exactly is the difference between ftape, and zftape?
|
|
|
|
|
|
When Ftape was young there were two versions of the floppy tape
|
|
driver, one of them was called zftape because of its built-in user-
|
|
transparent on-the-fly compression. Whether such a thing is a feature
|
|
or a bug ('cause this needn't be done in kernel space) is another
|
|
question. However, the ioctl interface and file mark handling provided
|
|
by zftape was much better and had less bugs. And zftape allows to use
|
|
floppy tape cartridges with different OS. Well, you can't exchange
|
|
data, but zftape won't overwrite volumes created by your Windoze
|
|
program, and vice versa.
|
|
|
|
Nowadays, Ftape is name of the entire floppy tape driver package AND
|
|
ftape.o is the file-name of the kernel module that implements the low-
|
|
level hardware support. zftape has ceased to exist as a separate
|
|
package, but the new Ftape versions (since ftape-3.00) contain a
|
|
zftape.o module that needs to be loaded on top of ftape.o (i.e. you
|
|
need to load BOTH modules to be able to access your floppy tape drive)
|
|
and implements the file system interface and the advanced (?) features
|
|
of the previous verions zftape.
|
|
|
|
<Answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.23. What is the difference between a rewinding, and non rewinding
|
|
drive?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, the rewinding tape devices rewind the tape to BOT (Begin Of
|
|
Tape) when the device is closed, i.e.
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar -cvf /dev/qft0 /bin
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
will rewind the tape cartridge when the tar job has finished. In con-
|
|
trast,
|
|
|
|
|
|
tar -cvf /dev/nqft0 /bin
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
will NOT rewind the tape cartridge and leave the tape R/W head at its
|
|
current position.
|
|
|
|
Rewinding devices should be used when performing a single backup, non-
|
|
rewinding devices can be useful when doing multiple backups as one
|
|
doesn't need to space to EOM (End Of recorded Media) before appending
|
|
another archive.
|
|
|
|
Non-rewinding devices MUST be used when sending any of the tape motion
|
|
command to the tape drive, such as
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/nqft0 fsf
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
, because when the mt process finishes then the tape device is closed
|
|
which would result in rewinding the cartridge with the rewinding
|
|
devices.
|
|
|
|
<Answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.24. Can someone tell me how to use mt to rewind my TR-3 drive one
|
|
record using zftape record, so I can verify it?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, it depends. If the tape is still positioned inside the volume
|
|
just written, "mt bsf 1" (or equivalently "mt bsf") will backspace
|
|
just to the beginning of that volume (this is how "tar --verify"
|
|
works). If the tape is already positioned AFTER the filemark that
|
|
marks the end of the last written volume, then you need to issue "mt
|
|
bsf 2"
|
|
|
|
|
|
The logic behind this is as follows: "MTBSF count" backspaces over
|
|
count file marks, stops, and then positions on the EOT side of the
|
|
last skipped file mark. This means, an "mt bsf 2" will position right
|
|
at the beginning of the previous volume.
|
|
|
|
<answer form Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.25. By non-rewinding, they mean that it doesn't automatically
|
|
rewind, correct? It doesn't mean that under no circumstances it will
|
|
rewind, right? I tried using /dev/zqft0, and it instantly rewinds the
|
|
tape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You are right: auto-rewind means, the tape is rewound when the tape
|
|
device is closed, non-rewinding means, the tape isn't automatically
|
|
rewound when the tape device is closed (but you can, of course, use
|
|
the tape motion commands BSF/FSF etc. to position the tape head at
|
|
every position you like).
|
|
|
|
<answer form Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.26. What is the difference between what mt considers a record and
|
|
what it considers a file?
|
|
|
|
|
|
A record is the minimal amount of bytes that will be accepted by the
|
|
tape in one read/write operation (except in "variable block size mode"
|
|
where it just should be the amount of data actually written in a
|
|
single write operation??).
|
|
|
|
For zftape every read and write access has to be a multiple of a fixed
|
|
block size (fixed, but tunable with MTSETBLK). This block size is a
|
|
"tape record" (as mentioned in the GNU mt man page and defaults to
|
|
10kb for zftape.
|
|
|
|
A "file" (in the sense of the mt man page) is a, well, misleading
|
|
terminus. What is meant is an area of the tape between two file marks.
|
|
This is not a file like a file on the file system, in the sense that
|
|
it could have a name, file access modes, could be moved or copied with
|
|
cp, mv, rm etc.
|
|
|
|
Instead, It simply is the area of the tape that was recorded in one
|
|
backup session, its end is marked by a tape file mark, and its
|
|
beginning is delimited by either BOT or the file mark of the previous
|
|
tape "file". That tape "files" are the things that can be skipped with
|
|
the MTBSF/FSF commands.
|
|
|
|
<answer form Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.27. Reusing tapes with zftape without reformatting the tape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
We try to answer the followong questions :
|
|
|
|
o Is there a good way to erase, as in remove the data or at least the
|
|
volumes from a tape, without reformating?
|
|
|
|
o Can you overwrite the last volume on a tape with making a mess out
|
|
of it?
|
|
|
|
o Can you overwrite the last several volumes without making a mess?
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Can you delete the last volume?
|
|
|
|
If you want to "erase" an entire cartridge, then simply do:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt -f /dev/qft0 erase
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This will erase the volume table (i.e. the "file marks").
|
|
|
|
Pre-ftape-3.x releases of zftape and ftape used to allow overwriting
|
|
of already existing volumes on a cartridge. I have removed this
|
|
feature as it was reported that it already has caused data-loss with
|
|
some backup programs.
|
|
|
|
If you indeed need to remove some volumes on the tape then you should
|
|
use the
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
vtblc
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
program that comes with the ftape-tools package which can be down-
|
|
loaded from the same locations as the ftape kernel driver package.
|
|
Please refer to the documentation which is contained in the ftape-
|
|
tools package for more information.
|
|
|
|
If you simply want to reuse old tapes, then it suffices to do
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
mt rewind
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If the tape is at BOT (Begin Of Tape) then every write access to the
|
|
tape will silently erase all file marks and overwrite the data already
|
|
existing on the tape.
|
|
|
|
<answer by Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.28. This script implements a simple contents listing for the
|
|
zftape package using the "MTIOCVOLINFO" ioctl.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Here is as little perl/bash script that lists the contents of a
|
|
cartridge using the zftape specific "volinfo" ioctl. Hope this shows
|
|
how to handle this kind of stuff.
|
|
|
|
What it basically does is the following:
|
|
|
|
|
|
1. Rewind the cartridge
|
|
|
|
2. Issue the volinfo command:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
claus@thales:~$ mt volinfo
|
|
file number = 1
|
|
block size = 10240
|
|
physical space used = 522.0 kilobytes
|
|
real size of volume = 520.0 kilobytes
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Parse the ouput and place the values in appropriate variables
|
|
|
|
3. Skip to the next volume with "mt fsf"
|
|
|
|
4. Exit if this gives an error (EOD), otherwise "goto 2)"
|
|
|
|
The Perl Script
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
#!/usr/bin/perl
|
|
#
|
|
# Copyright (C) 1997 Claus-Justus Heine
|
|
#
|
|
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
|
|
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
|
|
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
|
|
# any later version.
|
|
#
|
|
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
|
|
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
|
|
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
|
|
# GNU General Public License for more details.
|
|
#
|
|
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
|
|
# along with this program; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
|
|
# the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
|
|
#
|
|
# This script implements a simple contents listing for the zftape
|
|
# package using the MTIOCVOLINFO ioctl.
|
|
#
|
|
|
|
$version = <<EOT;
|
|
listtape-1.0 -- a perl script to list the contents of a floppy tape cartridge
|
|
under Linux using the zftape driver
|
|
|
|
RCS \$Revision: 1.2 $
|
|
RCS \$Date: 1998/08/30 13:44:03 $
|
|
EOT
|
|
|
|
$tapedev = "/dev/tape";
|
|
$usage = <<EOT;
|
|
Usage: listtape [options ...]
|
|
|
|
Mandatory or optional arguments to long options are mandatory or optional
|
|
for short options too.
|
|
|
|
-f, --file=FILE Tape device to use. Default is "/dev/tape".
|
|
-h, --help Print this help.
|
|
-? Same as '-h'.
|
|
--usage Same as '-h'.
|
|
-V, --version Print version information.
|
|
|
|
Author: Claus-Justus Heine <claus\@momo.math.rwth-aachen.de>
|
|
EOT
|
|
|
|
while ($ARGV[0] =~ /^-/) {
|
|
$_ = shift;
|
|
if (/--file/) {$_ = shift; $tapedev = $_; next;}
|
|
if (/-f/) {$_ = shift; $tapedev = $_; next;}
|
|
if (/--help/) { print $usage; exit 0; }
|
|
if (/-h/) { print $usage; exit 0; }
|
|
if (/--usage/) { print $usage; exit 0; }
|
|
if (/-\?/) { print $usage; exit 0; }
|
|
if (/--version/) { print $version; exit 0; }
|
|
if (/-V/) { print $version; exit 0; }
|
|
die $usage;
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
&open_tape($tapedev, "status");
|
|
while(<FTMT>)
|
|
{
|
|
$online = 1 if (/.*online.*/);
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
if (! $online) { die "No cartridge present.\n"; }
|
|
&mtop($tapedev, "rewind");
|
|
|
|
printf "%11s%12s%20s%20s\n",
|
|
"file number", "block size", "volume size", "tape space";
|
|
|
|
while (1)
|
|
{
|
|
&open_tape($tapedev, "volinfo");
|
|
while (<FTMT>) {
|
|
if (/^file number\s*=\s*([0-9]*)$/) { $filenumber = $1; }
|
|
if (/^block size\s*=\s*([0-9]*)$/) { $blocksize = $1; }
|
|
if (/^physical space used\s*=\s*([[0-9]*.*)/) { $rawsize = $1; }
|
|
if (/^real size of volume\s*=\s*([[0-9]*.*)/) { $size = $1; }
|
|
}
|
|
close(FTMT);
|
|
if (&mtop($tapedev, "fsf 1") != 0) {
|
|
&mtop($tapedev,"rewind");
|
|
print "\nRemaining space: $rawsize\n";
|
|
print "Tape block size: $blocksize\n";
|
|
exit 0;
|
|
}
|
|
printf "%6d %5d %20s%20s\n",
|
|
$filenumber, $blocksize, $size, $rawsize;
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
sub mtop
|
|
{
|
|
local ($tape, $operation) = @_;
|
|
local ($exitval);
|
|
system "ftmt -f $tape $operation > /dev/null 2>&1";
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
sub open_tape
|
|
{
|
|
local ($tape, $operation) = @_;
|
|
local ($command);
|
|
|
|
$command = "ftmt -f " . $tape . " " . $operation . " |";
|
|
open(FTMT, $command) || die "Couldn't open $command -- $!\n";
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Bash Script
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
______________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
#! /bin/bash
|
|
#
|
|
# Copyright (C) 1997 Claus-Justus Heine
|
|
#
|
|
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
|
|
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
|
|
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
|
|
# any later version.
|
|
#
|
|
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
|
|
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
|
|
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
|
|
# GNU General Public License for more details.
|
|
#
|
|
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
|
|
# along with this program; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
|
|
# the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
|
|
#
|
|
# This script implements a simple contents listing for the zftape
|
|
# package using the MTIOCVOLINFO ioctl.
|
|
#
|
|
|
|
#
|
|
# insert better option parsing here
|
|
#
|
|
TAPEDEV=${1-/dev/tape}
|
|
|
|
if ! echo $TAPEDEV | grep "/dev/n"
|
|
then
|
|
TAPEDEV=/dev/n$(basename $TAPEDEV)
|
|
fi
|
|
|
|
if ! [ -c $TAPEDEV ]
|
|
then
|
|
echo $TAPEDEV is not a character device! 1>&2
|
|
exit 1
|
|
fi
|
|
|
|
if ! mt -f $TAPEDEV rewind
|
|
then
|
|
echo Could not rewind $TAPEDEV - no cartridge present? 1>&2
|
|
exit 1
|
|
fi
|
|
|
|
echo -e "\nContents of $TAPEDEV:\n"
|
|
|
|
printf "%11s%12s%20s%20s\n" "file number" "block size" "volume size" "tape space"
|
|
|
|
trap "rm -f /tmp/$0.$$" exit
|
|
|
|
while true
|
|
do
|
|
if ! foo=$(mt -f $TAPEDEV volinfo |cut -f 2 -d =)
|
|
then
|
|
echo $TAPEDEV doesn\'t seem to be a floppy tape device 1>&2
|
|
exit 1
|
|
fi
|
|
#
|
|
# "echo foo | read foo" will not work as the "read foo" is executed in
|
|
# another shell.
|
|
#
|
|
echo $foo > /tmp/$0.$$
|
|
read file blksz used usedunit size sizeunit < /tmp/$0.$$
|
|
if ! mt -f $TAPEDEV fsf 1 > /dev/null 2>&1
|
|
then
|
|
echo -e "\nRemaining space: $used $usedunit"
|
|
echo -e "Tape block size: $blksz"
|
|
if ! mt -f $TAPEDEV rewind
|
|
then
|
|
echo Rewind of $TAPEDEV failed 1>&2
|
|
exit 1
|
|
fi
|
|
exit 0
|
|
fi
|
|
printf "%6d %5d %20s%20s\n"\
|
|
$file $blksz "$size $sizeunit" "$used $usedunit"
|
|
done
|
|
______________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
12. FAQ: "Tape and Drivers" related questions !
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
12.1. What are good makers of Travan tapes?
|
|
|
|
|
|
I was the UNIX Product Manager at Archive Corp (Prior to the
|
|
Conner/Seagate mess) and we performed extensive tests of tape media
|
|
for compatibility certification, including retentivity, flaking and
|
|
length consistancy. Based on the results of the tests, we selected
|
|
the best of these certified manufacturers' products to private label
|
|
as our own media. Here is the order in which we selected vendors up
|
|
through 1995 (when I lost contact with the ATI group):
|
|
|
|
|
|
QIC
|
|
|
|
1. 3M (now known as Imation)
|
|
|
|
2. QMaxell/Sony (tie)
|
|
|
|
3. (BTW - Iomega uses Sony private-labelled media)
|
|
|
|
4MM
|
|
|
|
1. Fuji
|
|
|
|
2. Maxell/Sony (tie - is this a trend?)
|
|
|
|
8MM
|
|
|
|
1. Fuji/Exabyte - which we believed to be OEM'd Fuji (tie - so
|
|
much for trend!)
|
|
|
|
2. Sony
|
|
|
|
3. Maxell
|
|
|
|
DLT
|
|
|
|
1. Maxell
|
|
|
|
2. Sony
|
|
|
|
|
|
Otherwise, we had entries in our search from other vendors which were
|
|
generally a private-labelled version of one of the major labels above.
|
|
The exceptions were Verbatim and DIC. Both of these manufacturer's
|
|
media had fall-out rates and length discrepancies that were so high
|
|
that we would not certify them and even warned customers about them
|
|
indicating that we could not offer any sort of guarantee that they
|
|
would get a good backup using the media from these manufacturers.
|
|
|
|
In addition, since coming to EST, I've found that Verbatim media is
|
|
still not worth the money saved in purchasing it. We have 11 of their
|
|
TR-Extra and QIC-Extra (QICXL) tapes that were useless after fewer
|
|
than 20 passes each.
|
|
|
|
While this is my personal opinion, it is based on over 9 years of
|
|
experience with this very question, I strongly recommend Imation/3M
|
|
media for QIC/Travan user, Fuji media 4MM users, Exabyte/Fuji for 8MM
|
|
and DEC labelled media for DLT users.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Tim Jones>
|
|
|
|
|
|
12.2. Where can I obtain the QIC standards?
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you wish to help developing Ftape, or add some utility (e.g. a tape
|
|
formatting program), you will need that appropriate QIC standards.
|
|
The standard(s) to get is: QIC-80, -117, -3010, and 3020. QIC-117
|
|
describes how commands are sent to the tape drive (including timing
|
|
etc), so you would probably never need it. QIC-80/3010/3020 describes
|
|
higher level part, such as tape layout, ECC code, standard filesystem.
|
|
You can get the QIC standards from the following address:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quarter Inch Cartridge Drive Standards, Inc.
|
|
311 East Carrillo Street
|
|
Santa Barbara, California 93101
|
|
Phone: (805) 963-3853
|
|
Fax: (805) 962-1541
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Note: They are registered as `Freeman Associates, Inc' in the phone
|
|
book.
|
|
|
|
<from the Ftape-Howto>
|
|
|
|
|
|
12.3. Is the Iomega Ditto 2GB drive supported?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yes, if you are using version ftape-3.x or later of the Ftape drivers
|
|
from the Ftape Home Page or from
|
|
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Tim Jones>
|
|
|
|
As the Ditto 2GB is a Tr-3 tape (though it can only store 1GB instead
|
|
of the 1.6GB you get with a regular Tr-3 drive) you need an FDC (FDC
|
|
means: Floppy Disk Controller) that is capable of at 1Mbit/sec
|
|
transfer rate. You don't need to worry about this if you have an
|
|
accellerator card (i.e. the Ditto Dash controller). Otherwise try to
|
|
purchase an FDC that claims to be capable of driving 2.88Mb floppies
|
|
because this implies that the FDC is capable of 1Mbit transfer rate.
|
|
|
|
Ftape prints the maximum data rate of the FDC to the kernel log files
|
|
like this:
|
|
|
|
ftape-ctl.c (ftape_init_drive) - Highest FDC supported data rate: 500 Kbps.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
12.4. Is the Iomega Ditto Max drive supported?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yes, if you are using version ftape-4.02 or later of the Ftape drivers
|
|
from the Ftape Home Page or from
|
|
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
12.5. Is the Iomega Ditto Max Pro drive supported?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yes. But if you want to use the 5GB (10GB with compression) cartridges
|
|
you don't need it. With ftape there doesn't seem to be any difference
|
|
between the Ditto Max and the Ditto Max Pro.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
13. FAQ: Miscellaneous !
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
13.1. How to subscribe to the Ftape Mailing List?
|
|
|
|
|
|
You can subscribe to that list by sending mail to
|
|
|
|
|
|
majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
with the single line
|
|
|
|
|
|
subscribe linux-tape
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
in its body. Please store the answer you get from majordomo in a safe
|
|
place because it contains instructions how to UNSUBSCRIBE from the
|
|
mailing list.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
13.2. How to un-subscribe from the Ftape Mailing List?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Send mail to
|
|
|
|
|
|
majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
with the single line
|
|
|
|
|
|
unsubscribe linux-tape MY@EMAIL.ADDRESS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
where MY@EMAIL.ADDRESS has to be replaced by the the email address
|
|
that you used when subscribing to the list. Note that you must have
|
|
received an email with instructions how to unsubscribe from the mail-
|
|
ing list at the time you subscribed to it.
|
|
|
|
<answer from Claus Heine>
|
|
|
|
|
|
13.3. Links to related information.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
<http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/usai/library/backups.html>
|
|
|
|
More links wanted !!!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
14. Debugging the ftape driver
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
14.1. The kernel/ ftape crashes on me when I do `...' - is that a
|
|
bug?
|
|
|
|
|
|
No, that is a feature ;-)
|
|
|
|
Seriously, reliable software do not crash. Especially kernels do not
|
|
or rather should not crash. If the kernel crashes upon you when you
|
|
are running ftape, and you can show that it is ftape that is messing
|
|
things up, regard it as a Bug That Should Be Fixed. Mail the details
|
|
to the maintainer (<heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de>) and to the tape list.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
14.2. OK, it's a bug ...ehhh... feature - How do I submit a report?
|
|
|
|
|
|
First, make sure you can reproduce the problem. Spurious errors are a
|
|
pain in the ass, since they are just about impossible to hunt down :-/
|
|
This is a quick check list:
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Kernel version, and patches applied
|
|
|
|
o ftape version
|
|
|
|
o tape drive model / manufacturer
|
|
|
|
o Expansion bus type (EISA, ISA, PCI, or VL-bus)
|
|
|
|
o What you did to expose the problem
|
|
|
|
o What went wrong on your system.
|
|
|
|
o Do not delete the kernel and the ftape.o file. I might want you run
|
|
try some patches out or run a different test on your system.
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Increase the tracing level to 4 or 5 and run the command that caused
|
|
problems again (don't do it if your fear that you loose data or damage
|
|
your hardware, there is absolutely no warranty for neither data loss
|
|
nor hardware damage caused by ftape, remember this). Increasing the
|
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trace level beyond 5 probably doesn't make any sense as it affects the
|
|
timing of the driver in a way that it doesn't work well any more. Get
|
|
the tracing data from the kernel log or /proc/kmsg, depending on where
|
|
you harvest your error messages. Try to look at what ftape spews out
|
|
at you. It may look in-comprehensible to you at first, but you can
|
|
get valuable information from the logfile. Most messages have a
|
|
function name prepended, to make it easier to locate the problem.
|
|
Look through the source, don't just cry ``WOLF!'', without giving it a
|
|
try. If your version of the kernel (or ftape for that matter), is
|
|
``old'', when compared to the newest version of the kernel, try to get
|
|
a newer (or even the newest) kernel and see if the problem goes away
|
|
under the new kernel. When you post your problem report, include the
|
|
information about ftape version, kernel version, expansion bus type
|
|
(ISA, VL-bus, PCI or EISA), bus speed, floppy controller, and tape
|
|
drive. State exactly what you did, and what happened on your system.
|
|
Some people have experienced that ftape would not run in a PCI based
|
|
box, but ran flawlessly in a normal ISA based 386DX machine (see
|
|
section ``Getting PCI motherboards to work with <tt/ftape/'' on PCI
|
|
machines above)
|
|
|
|
Also, please think of the poor souls who actually pay the their
|
|
Internet access (like me): avoid posting a (huge) log from the ftape
|
|
run, without reason. Instead, you could describe the problem, and
|
|
offer to send the log to the interested parties.
|
|
|
|
Send your bug report to <linux-tape@vger.rutgers.edu>. You might also
|
|
want to mail the bug to <heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de>.
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|
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|
15. Contributions
|
|
|
|
|
|
The following is a list of notable folks that have contributed to
|
|
ftape's HOWTO document. This is a recent addition added by someone
|
|
coming in midstream. My sincerest apologies if I've inadvertently
|
|
left someone important off the list. You can view anoterh attempt to
|
|
collect such kind of information at Ftape's Hall of Fame
|
|
|
|
Johan De Wit <jo@correct.nl>: The maintainer of the Ftape FAQ.
|
|
|
|
Kevin Johnson <kjj@pobox.com>: The previous maintainer of the Ftape-
|
|
HOWTO
|
|
|
|
Kai Harrekilde-Petersen <khp@dolphinics.no>: The previous maintainer
|
|
of ftape and the HOWTO.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Andrew Martin <martin@biochemistry.ucl.ac.uk>: Many additions to the
|
|
HOWTO.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bas Laarhoven <bas@vimec.nl>: The original author of ftape.
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