The Ftape Installation Guide

Ftape version 3.04d

November 1997

Claus-Justus Heine


Copyright © November 1997 Claus-Justus Heine claus@momo.math.rwth-aachen.de

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the sections entitled ``Copying'' and ``GNU General Public License'' (see GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE) are included exactly as in the original, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation.

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This document describes basic usage and installation of the floppy tape device driver ftape for Linux.

This document applies to version 3.04d of the ftape device driver.

Copying Your rights and freedoms.
Introduction What is ftape.
Reporting bugs Submitting bug and problem reports.
Documentation Ways to get access to the documentation.
Quick Installation If you are fed up with RTFM.
Installation How to install.
Loading ftape Loading the kernel modules
Testing ftape Testing the driver
File System Interface VFS Interface and Implementation Notes
Concept Index Index.


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Ways to get access to the documentation

Sources of Documentation Sources of documentation
HTML The HTML version of the manual
Info The Info version of the manual
DVI The DVI version of the manual, hard-copies
TEXinfo TEXinfo, rebuilding the documentation

Installation

Requirements What is needed for the Installation
Kernel log daemons Daemons for logging kernel messages
Kernel patches Inclusion into kernel, compatibility patches
Compiling ftape Compiling ftape, compile time configuration
Installing ftape Installing the kernel modules and utilities
Un-installing ftape Un-installing the kernel modules and utilities

Kernel Patches

Very old kernels What to do if running prehistoric kernels
1.2.13 Installation under Linux-1.2.13
2.*.* Installation under Linux-2.0.0 and up

Installation under Linux-1.2.13

Patching 1.2.13 Changing 1.2.13 by using the patch command.
Changing 1.2.13 by hand Doing it yourself.

Compiling ftape, compile time configuration

FDC_OPT Setting up for your hardware
CONFIG_MODVERSIONS Versioned symbols
BROKEN_FLOPPY_DRIVER Ignore bad behavior of the floppy driver
CONFIG_FT_ALPHA_CLOCK Compiling ftape on DEC Alpha machines
CONFIG_FT_PROC_FS The procfs Interface of ftape
TRACE_FLAGS Controlling the amount of debugging output

Loading the Kernel Modules

Contrib Small utilities STRONGLY RECOMMENDED
Kerneld Use with the kerneld module auto-loading
Configure ftape Load time configuration
Insmod ftape Inserting the ftape modules into the kernel

Small utilities needed for using ftape

Swapout The memory de-fragmentation utility
mt The tape control program
vtblc The volume table manipulation program
ftformat The formatting program
listtape Listing the volumes on your tape

Testing the driver

ftape Debugging Messages ftape Debugging Messages
Output of the status command Output of ftmt status
Syslog example (first access) Syslog example, first tape access

VFS Interface and Implementation Notes

Device description Devices provided by zftape
File marks `End Of File' marks with zftape
Tape blocks Recording fixed length data blocks
Compression Builtin Compression
Ioctls The ioctl interface to ftape

Devices provided by zftape

Rewinding devices Rewinding and non-rewinding devices
Drive selection The meaning of the digit suffix
zftape devices Devices provided by zftape

Devices provided by zftape

zftape devices table Table of devices
zftape devices overview Overview
zftape devices compatibility Notes on compatibility with ftape-2.x
/dev/qft not-compressing devices with vtbl segment
/dev/rft Synonym to `/dev/qft'
/dev/zqft Compressing devices with vtbl segment
/dev/rawft Raw access to all tape segments

File marks

ftape-2.x file marks File mark implementation with ftape-2.x
zftape file marks File mark implementation with zftape
tar EOF File marks and tar

The ioctl interface to ftape

MTIOCTOP The tape operation wrapper ioctl
MTIOCGET Query the tape status
MTIOCPOS Query the tape position
MTIOCRDFTSEG and MTIOCWRFTSEG Read and write floppy tape segments
MTIOCVOLINFO Query info about the current volume (zftape)
MTIOCGETSIZE Query the size of the cartridge (zftape)
MTIOCFTFORMAT Format a floppy tape cartridge (zftape)
MTIOCFTCMD Send raw QIC-117 commands to the tape drive

The tape operation wrapper ioctl MTIOCTOP

MTRESET Reset drive and driver
MTFSF Skip forward over file marks
MTBSF Skip backward over file marks
MTFSR Skip forward over tape records
MTBSR Skip backwards over tape records
MTWEOF Write file mark
MTREW Rewind cartridge
MTOFFL Put drive off-line
MTNOP No op, set status
MTRETEN Retension the cartridge
MTBSFM Skip backwards over file marks
MTFSFM Skip forward over tape file marks
MTEOM Skip to end of recorded area
MTERASE Erase cartridge
MTSETBLK Setting the block size (zftape)
MTSETDENSITY Setting the debugging level (zftape)
MTSEEK Seek to absolute tape block (zftape)
MTTELL Request tape position, buggy
MTSETDRVBUFFER Set amount of driver memory (zftape)
MTCOMPRESSION Switch compression on and off (zftape)

Formatting of cartridges using MTIOCFTFORMAT

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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