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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!EU.net!main.Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!interface-business.de!usenet From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Subject: Re: Installing a SCSI Tape Drive Date: 27 Nov 1996 12:57:21 GMT Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden Lines: 22 Message-ID: <57hdrh$kp9@innocence.interface-business.de> References: <3295B2E8.331F@framatech.com> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: ida.interface-business.de X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-31809-14 X-Fax: +49-351-3361187 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Jamie Brooks <Jamie_T_Brooks@framatech.com> wrote: > 2. The kernel saw the tape drive and it is usable with tar, however if I > try to do a dump (there is no block device for the tape drive). I > created a block device for the tape drive, however it can not open the > device. Why do you want to use a block device for dump? Dump creates a plain data stream, and such a stream should always be directed to the raw device, regardless of whether it's a tape, a floppy, or whatnot. There's no use in blasting the f/s buffer cache with this stream. Block devices are there for mounting filesystems over them. Many of our today's tape drives don't support random seek anyway, and those that do suck at the performance when you try it. And, UFS is optimized for disks, you certainly don't wanna use it for tapes at all. :-) -- J"org Wunsch Unix support engineer joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de http://www.interface-business.de/~j