Have you seen this:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=110634
Anyone know how to install an IBM LTO 3 Ultrium tape drive?
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PappyPuppy
- Posts: 409
- Joined: Sat 01 Oct 2016, 00:27
The mt-st backup and restore program
Hi,
I would like to use such a program at some point - to test out more "tape-centric" apis and how will the drivers fare in such an environment. I might actually need a little bit of tape in the software I'm writing even though it's mostly just the cartridge memory I'm reading and writing. My program runs very well and just needs some more business logic. Perhaps I would need some tape apis, not sure yet.
But there is ONE MAJOR ISSUE I have to resolve that I noticed (and feared).
That echo ... scan command that I give earlier in this thread which I use to make sure the tape drive is loaded and ready to go as a SCSI device.
I forgot to learn how to do a rescan. The fact that I've done a scan each time I restart Fatdog has proliferated a huge tree-like set of device files under the sys/class/scsi_tape/st0 (and perhaps with st0a, ...). So I need advice on how to not keep creating these files. I will look at the Internet site where I learned this command or some other site and see what they say but I better solve this problem or I will mess my file-structure for sure.
I hope there is a "rescan" option or scan -re or whatever. And I hope that the command can simply be run the same number of times I've already run it - which I can count from terminal window.
I would like to use such a program at some point - to test out more "tape-centric" apis and how will the drivers fare in such an environment. I might actually need a little bit of tape in the software I'm writing even though it's mostly just the cartridge memory I'm reading and writing. My program runs very well and just needs some more business logic. Perhaps I would need some tape apis, not sure yet.
But there is ONE MAJOR ISSUE I have to resolve that I noticed (and feared).
That echo ... scan command that I give earlier in this thread which I use to make sure the tape drive is loaded and ready to go as a SCSI device.
I forgot to learn how to do a rescan. The fact that I've done a scan each time I restart Fatdog has proliferated a huge tree-like set of device files under the sys/class/scsi_tape/st0 (and perhaps with st0a, ...). So I need advice on how to not keep creating these files. I will look at the Internet site where I learned this command or some other site and see what they say but I better solve this problem or I will mess my file-structure for sure.
I hope there is a "rescan" option or scan -re or whatever. And I hope that the command can simply be run the same number of times I've already run it - which I can count from terminal window.
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PappyPuppy
- Posts: 409
- Joined: Sat 01 Oct 2016, 00:27
Or is there something I don't quite understand ...
These are just symbolic links - perhaps I just need to delete a bunch of symbolic links. I now realize that they each have an arrow on them. Still, I hate having so many symoblic links in such a profuse tree structure on my hard-drive.
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PappyPuppy
- Posts: 409
- Joined: Sat 01 Oct 2016, 00:27
I'm no longer worried about the recursive links
I think everyone who runs Linux has the same recursion in their sys directories as I have.
It's normal.
No, I 've not tried ptape. It's possible that I will not need to look at the tape, only the cartridge. As long as I find what I need on the cartridge chip, I won't need to spin the tapes. Some exceptional tapes, I might need to do that.
Perhaps for all, later
But i"ll check out these programs one by one.
It's normal.
No, I 've not tried ptape. It's possible that I will not need to look at the tape, only the cartridge. As long as I find what I need on the cartridge chip, I won't need to spin the tapes. Some exceptional tapes, I might need to do that.
Perhaps for all, later
But i"ll check out these programs one by one.
Just thinking out loud here. Reading data from a tape has to be very similar to reading data from a CD or DVD. Both are sequential access. A CD or DVD read head can skip many tracks ahead or back on a the disk, but once it's synced up, it reads the data off just the same way a tape drive does.. A tape drive has to run the tape all the way through the read head until it gets to the good part.
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PappyPuppy
- Posts: 409
- Joined: Sat 01 Oct 2016, 00:27
My "good part" is probably only the first block or so.
Now that I've written the code for the cartridge memory, I can try out those programs mentioned earlier in the thread. I only need to read the first block of the tape with my program.
It's likely that I will delegate reading the rest of the tape to someone else as they are the ones who will make sure the tape is good. It's not really my job.
But if they redelegate it back to me, then I will check the tapes with my program.
I waited until tomorrow because I wanted to make sure I didn't wind up with a used drive that eats tapes, and possibly lose the ability to test my C++ program (this could also be done in Perl or Python or other ways). I only paid 45.00 for the drive which probably cost close to a 1000.00 new. It beats my old Colorados although it's probably not as good as the old PDP 11/70 drives I used early in my career in research and development.
All drives need to be maintained or retired - whether hard-drive, floppy, cd/dvd, or tape.
But hopefully I will use this drive as a backup device, and I might buy some more of them. That's why I've been downloading all the documents from their sites and from HP's sites. I want to learn the physical make-up of the drive in case I need to fix it.
It's likely that I will delegate reading the rest of the tape to someone else as they are the ones who will make sure the tape is good. It's not really my job.
But if they redelegate it back to me, then I will check the tapes with my program.
I waited until tomorrow because I wanted to make sure I didn't wind up with a used drive that eats tapes, and possibly lose the ability to test my C++ program (this could also be done in Perl or Python or other ways). I only paid 45.00 for the drive which probably cost close to a 1000.00 new. It beats my old Colorados although it's probably not as good as the old PDP 11/70 drives I used early in my career in research and development.
All drives need to be maintained or retired - whether hard-drive, floppy, cd/dvd, or tape.
But hopefully I will use this drive as a backup device, and I might buy some more of them. That's why I've been downloading all the documents from their sites and from HP's sites. I want to learn the physical make-up of the drive in case I need to fix it.