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8.5.7: Formatting of cartridges using MTIOCFTFORMAT

Most of the formatting stuff has been moved from the kernel level device driver to a user level program ftformat located under `./contrib/ftformat/'. Please refer to the documentation of that program for further information how to actually format floppy tape cartridges. The following gives only an outline of the ioctl interface to the kernel level device driver. The argument to the MTIOCFTFORMAT ioctl has to be of type struct mtftformat. The definitions of that structure and of the ioctl are included in a subsection for your reference.

Note that the MTIOCFTFORMAT ioctl has to be accompanied by several MTIOCFTCMD ioctl calls. See MTIOCFTCMD. It has to be understood that the MTIOCFTFORMAT does not switch the tape drive to format mode, neither does it erase the old format by means of the `physical forward' resp. `physical reverse' QIC-117 floppy tape commands. Also, the MTIOCFTFORMAT ioctl does not compute the sector coordinates that have to be written to the tape drive by means of DMA transfer during the formatting process. There is subsection for each of the operations that can be performed with the MTIOCFTFORMAT ioctl and an additional subsection that is a quotation from mtio.h and contains the ioctl definitions.

struct mtftformat MTIOCFTFORMAT ioctl definition
FTFMT_SET_PARMS Set software parameters
FTFMT_GET_PARMS Get software parameters
FTFMT_FORMAT_TRACK Start formatting a tape track
FTFMT_STATUS Monitor formatting a tape track
FTFMT_VERIFY Verify a floppy tape segment

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