*BSD News Article 66430


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.bhp.com.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.ysu.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!nntp.gmd.de!news.rwth-aachen.de!not-for-mail
From: odiug@faho.rwth-aachen.de (Guido Muesch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Problem with tape backup
Date: 18 Apr 1996 10:03:19 GMT
Organization: RWTH -Aachen / Rechnerbetrieb Informatik
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <4l5417$674@news.rwth-aachen.de>
References: <31752B90.73EA@shoreland.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: darkstar.faho.rwth-aachen.de
X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0]

Thanva Khouvongsavanh (thanva@shoreland.com) wrote:
: Hi,
: 
: I having trouble with my Colorado 250 tape drive.
: My 486 box has 1.44 drive and the Colorado tape. I recompiled my kernel with
: 
:   controller      fdc0    at isa? port "IO_FD1" bio irq 6 drq 2 vector fdintr
:   disk            fd0     at fdc0 drive 0
:   tape            ft0     at fdc0 drive 1
: 
: in the config file. I then did a 'sh MAKEDEV ft0' after I reboot the machine.
: When I do a 'mt -f /dev/ft0 rewind', I get a "Device not configured"
: 
: Am I missing a step somewhere?

The QIC-80 tape device is different from normal tape devices. You need
a special program to read/write data from/to the tape. Try 'man ft'.

Usually you do something like:
ft | tar xvf -          # restore stuff
tar cvf - /home | ft    # write a backup of /home 

The /dev/ft0 device is only a low level interface to the floppy
tape. All error correction and sector handling is done in ft.

I personally prefer the way they did it under Linux with the ftape
driver. But on the other hand, floppy tapes are braindead anyway. It
would be nice if one could adopt the Linux ftape driver for
FreeBSD. But I think there were some major difficulties I already
forgot (Things for timing/scheduling inside the kernel are too different).

As far as I heard there is no ongoing development to improve 'ft'. So,
1 Mbit/s controller and Travan tapes will not be supported in the near
future. 

Best solution would be a cheap SCSI-Streamer.

: 
: Thank you in advance.
: 
: Thanva

Ciao
  Guido