[lug] DDS-4 tape issue

[Ferdinand Schmid]

SuSE ships both, the gnu mt and Kai's mt, which SuSE calls mt_st.  If
you load
the mt_st rpm then you will get Kai's newer mt package (which is also
less
than perfect - but better than the current gnu one).

Once you have installed the mt_st package you can:
rename the current /usr/bin/mt to /usr/bin/mtgnu
create a symlink /usr/bin/mt that points to /usr/bin/mtst

Ferdinand

--On Tuesday, March 09, 2004 04:41:28 PM -0700 George Sexton
<gsexton at mhsoftware.com> wrote:

> I was looking at mt this weekend, and it looks like the mt suse ships
> is the one from the GNU CPIO package, and it's pretty old and lacking
> functionality (at least compared to the one shipped with RH 7.2). In
> my particular instance I found that the "load" or "online" isn't
> supported. Additionally, RH 7.2's mt supported a compression on/off
> ioctl that the one with SUSE 9.0 doesn't.
> 
> My thinking is to find where RedHat's MT is from and use it instead of
> the one that SUSE ships.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us
> [mailto:lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us] On Behalf Of Gary Hodges
> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 4:28 PM
> To: Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List
> Subject: [lug] DDS-4 tape issue
> 
> 
> Seagate Scorpion DDS-4
> SuSE v9.0 Pro
> 
> I've just discovered a drive capacity issue.  I was backing up about
> 11  GB of data with a used tape (erased) using hardware compression
> and the  tape filled up.  I should be able to write 20 GB
> uncompressed and 40  compressed. 
> 
> space:~ # mt -f /dev/nst0 stat
> drive type = Generic SCSI-2 tape
> drive status = 637534720
> sense key error = 0
> residue count = 0
> file number = 0
> block number = 0
> Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x26 (unknown).
> Soft error count since last status=0
> General status bits on (41010000):
>  BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN
> 
> I'm thinking this must be an issue with the density code 0x26.  If I
> run
> 
> the following (some results edited out):
> 
> space:~ # mt -f /dev/nst0 densities
> 0x17   MFM 42500 bpi
> 0x24   DDS-2
> 0x8c   EXB-8505 compressed
> 
> there is no 0x26 listed.  Just a guess on my part, but I suspect SuSE 
> must be defaulting to a lower capacity.  I've done some google 
> searching, but there isn't much turning up.  I did see a suggestion
> to  tell tar that the tape is really long so it doesn't guess when it
> is  running out, but there must be a better way.
> 
> Gary
> 
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--
Ferdinand Schmid
Architectural Energy Corporation
Celebrating over 20 Years of Improving Building Energy Performance
http://www.archenergy.com