[lug] ftape distress

[Doug Shaw]

At 09:31 PM 2/15/00 -0700, you wrote:

>Slackware 4.0, Kernel 2.26 (original for distro)
>Abit TX-5 Mobo
>ftape 3.04d (distro default)

The 2.2 kernels got funky when working with ftape.  I beat my head on the
problem so much that I nearly suffered brain damage.  If I recall correctly
- and don't quote this as gospel - the 2.2 kernel series has some ftape
support within the kernel itself that needs to be enabled (it may even be
the official ftape 4.x source, I don't recall).  You may need to recompile
the kernel to get it working; I rarely use stock kernels and don't know
quite what support they come built with by default.

ftape 4.x - and/or the kernel's ftape support - generates two modules,
zftape and zft-compressor, that need to be loaded to access /dev/qft?.  I
think that these supercede the standard ftape.o module(s).  I recall having
the problem where accesses to /dev/qft? would fail without the modules
loaded.  If memory serves, this support cannot be included in a monolithic
kernel, so you'll have to use them as modules if you want to use them at all.

As for /dev/tape not existing, forget about that until you can access the
tape successfully using the actual device name (probably /dev/qft0).  Once
you've got the tape working, you can set up a link from /dev/tape to
/dev/qft0 (ln -s /dev/qft0 /dev/tape).

Doug