ftape
I will eventually include an installation guide in this section. You'll have to do without it, for the moment being.
ftape
ftape
is a driver program that controls various low-cost tape drives
that connect to the floppy controller.
ftape
is not a backup program as such; it is a device driver, which
allows you to use the tape drive (just like the SoundBlaster 16 driver let
you use your sound card) through the device file /dev/[n]rft[0-3]
.
ftape
is written by Bas Laarhoven <bas@vimec.nl>
, with
``a little help from his friends'' to sort out the ECC (Error Correcting Code)
stuff. ftape
is copyrighted by Bas under the GNU General Public
License, which basically says: ``go ahead and share this with the world, just
don't disallow other people from copying it further''.
ftape
is currently beta testing, and has been that for some time now.
It is reliable enough for critical backups (but always remember to check your
backups, so you won't get a nasty surprise someday).
ftape
supports drives that conform to the QIC-117 and one of the
QIC-80, QIC-40, QIC-3010, and QIC-3020 standards. ftape
does
not support QIC-02 tape drives or drives that connect via a SCSI
interface, e.g. a DAT drive. SCSI drives are accessed as
/dev/[n]st[0-7]
and are supported by the kernel through the SCSI
drivers. If you look for help on SCSI tape drives, you should read the
SCSI-howto
. See section
Supported drives
and
Un-supported drives
for a list of
supported and unsupported drives.
ftape
? You can achieve quite respectable backup and restore speeds with
ftape
: I have a Colorado DJ-20 and an Adaptec 1542CF controller, and
have measured a 4.25Mbyte/min sustained data transfer rate (no compression)
across a 70Mbyte tar archive, while comparing the archive on the tape with
data on my IDE disk. The speed of ftape
is mostly dependent on the
data transfer rate of your FDC: The AHA1542CF has a ``post-1991 82077'' FDC,
and it will push 1Mbit/sec at the tape drive. If you have an FDC which can
only deliver 500Kbit/sec data rates, you will see half the transfer rate
(well, roughly).
ftape
- and where to get it The newest version of the ftape
driver is ftape-2.02
, which
consists of ftape-2.02.tar.gz
and ftape-lsm
. ftape
can be fetched from the following site (and its mirrors):
sunsite.unc.edu [152.2.22.81]: /pub/Linux/kernel/tapes/
You should get the files: ftape-2.02.tar.gz
, and
ftape-lsm
. The .tar.gz
file is the ftape
driver
proper, while the lsm
file is a Linux Software Map (LSM) file for the
LSM project.
Newer kernels (from 1.1.85 and on), have improved support for loadable modules
(by Bjørn Ekwall and Jacques Gelinas), which (if possible) allows you
to insert modules compiled for an `old' kernel into a `new' kernel. To
compile the kernel with this improved module support, you need the
modules-1.1.87.tar.gz
file. It can be found on
tsx-11.mit.edu
and sunsite.unc.edu:
. You must compile and
install it before you compile the kernel.
WARNING: ftape-1.14
does not work. You must upgrade
to at least ftape-1.14a
.
Note that the version number of ftape
jumped from 1.14d directly to
2.00
.
ftape-2.02
Around 1.1.85
of the Linux kernel, <linux/sched.h>
stopped including the <linux/mm.h>
file, which ftape
needs. Therefore, you must add it to ftape.h
by hand.
--- ftape.h.orig Mon Jan 23 22:44:22 1995
+++ ftape.h Mon Jan 23 22:05:48 1995
@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@
*/
#include <linux/sched.h>
+#include <linux/mm.h>
#include "tracing.h"
You may also need to apply the following patch:
--- fdc-io.c.orig Sat Jan 21 18:37:21 1995
+++ fdc-io.c Sat Jan 21 18:37:21 1995
@@ -1015,7 +1015,7 @@
#ifndef FLOPPY_HACK
-static void ftape_interrupt( int unused)
+static void ftape_interrupt( int unused1, struct pt_regs * unused2)
{
TRACE_FUN( 8, "ftape_interrupt");
void (*handler)(void) = *fdc.hook;
1.1.5x
During patchlevel 50 to 60, the floppy driver got changed a few times. A some
point, the floppy driver forgot to release the interrupt line (IRQ6). This
would result in that you could not use ftape
and a floppy drive at
the same time. It also resulted in the if you tried to make a ``rescue disk''
(a very sensible thing), where you would boot from floppy and then restore
from your backup tape, you experience that when you used ftape
, it
would say `unable to grab IRQ6 for ftape driver
'. No fun. The
solution is to upgrade the kernel (v1.1.59 will work).
ftape-1.14a
, or earlier There have been fixed some serious bugs in the driver and you should really
consider to upgrade to at least 1.14d
.
ftape-1.14a
, or earlier Following the development of theftape
driverIf you want to follow the development of the ftape
driver, you should
consider subscribing to the TAPE channel on Linux-activists. To subscribe,
you send a mail to <linux-activists-request@niksula.hut.fi>
,
with the first line (or as a part of the header) saying
`X-Mn-Admin: join TAPE
'. If you send an empty mail you are sent a
HOWTO mail.
To submit a real mail to the mailing lists, send a mail to
<linux-activists@niksula.hut.fi>
, and remember that the first line
(or a header line) should read `X-Mn-Key: TAPE
'.
To get off the TAPE channel (:-(
), send a mail to
<linux-activists-request@niksula.hut.fi>
with the line
`X-Mn-Admin: leave TAPE
'
There is also a TAPE mailing list on vger.rutgers.edu
. To subscribe
to it, send a mail saying `subscribe linux-tape
' to
majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
. When you subscribe, you will be sent a
greeting mail, which will tell you how to submit real mails and how to get off
the list again.
ftape
driver There is installation guide (the file Install-guide
) included in
the ftape
distribution; please read that.
You can get the kernel sources from the same place as you got the
ftape
sources. The sources are kept at the following sites (and many
mirror-sites)
tsx-11.mit.edu [18.172.1.2]: /pub/linux/sources/system/
sunsite.unc.edu [152.2.22.81]: /pub/Linux/kernel/
ftp.funet.fi [128.214.248.6]: /pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus
You will find a number of subdirectories, including two named v1.1
and v1.2
. These contain (you guessed it!) v1.1
and
v1.2
of the kernel. I suggest that you get version 1.2.0
.
No! Honestly, no one is working on it: If you want to work on it, drop Bas a
line. Until then, you'll have to use MessyDOS (arghhh!) instead or buy
preformatted tapes. However, some of the preformatted tapes are not
checked for bad sectors!. If the ftape
driver encounters a tape with
no bad blocks, it will issue a warning. If ftape
barfs at your
preformatted tapes, try out your DOS software. If both the DOS software
and ftape
barfs on your tapes, a reformat will very probably
cure the problem.
Note that to be able to use your newly formatted tapes under ftape, you must erase the tape first:
mt -f /dev/nftape erase
These are known to work:
tape.exe
)qs3.exe
-- QICstream v3?)These programs are known to be more or less buggy:
In fact, most software under DOS should work. The Conner Backup Basics v1.0
has a parameter off by one (someone could not read the QIC-80 specs right!),
which is corrected in version 1.1. However, ftape
detects this, and
will work around it. Dennis T. Flaherty
(<dennisf@denix.elk.miles.com>
) report that Conner C250MQ owners
can obtain the new v1.1, by calling Conner at 1-800-4Conner (in the US) and
ask for an upgrade (for a nominal fee for the floppy). The Windows versions
should work fine. Some versions of Colorado's tape program for windows, has
an off-by-one error in the number of segments. ftape
also detect and
work around that bug.
Central Point Backup can be used, but it wastes precious tape space when it encounters a bad spot on the tape.
NOTE: If you are running a formatting software under DOS, which is not
mentioned here, please mail the relevant info to me
(<khp@pip.dknet.dk>
), so I can update the HOWTO.
ftape
and floppies Since both the floppy driver and ftape
need the FDC (and IRQ6), they
cannot run concurrently. Thus, if you have mounted a floppy and then try to
access the tape drive, ftape
will complain that it cannot grab IRQ6
and then die. This is especially a problem when designing a emergency disk
for use with ftape. This solution is to either load the boot/root disk into a
ramdisk and then unmount the floppy, or have two FDC's.
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