From owner-freebsd-scsi Mon Aug 4 15:58:28 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA03720 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 15:58:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fly.HiWAAY.net (root@fly.HiWAAY.net [208.147.154.56]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA03714 for ; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 15:58:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nexgen.hiwaay.net (tnt2-165.HiWAAY.net [208.147.148.165]) by fly.HiWAAY.net (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id RAA09229 for ; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 17:57:43 -0500 (CDT) Received: from nexgen (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by nexgen.hiwaay.net (8.8.6/8.8.4) with ESMTP id RAA12906 for ; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 17:57:41 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199708042257.RAA12906@nexgen.hiwaay.net> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: scsi@freebsd.org Subject: Maximum Tape Block Size? From: dkelly@HiWAAY.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 17:57:39 -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk A year or so ago I recall Jordan had an SGI DAT tape with 256k blocksize which wouldn't read on FreeBSD. Am wondering how this problem was eventually solved? Checking the archives I found mention of MAXBSIZE which appears to be defined in /usr/src/sys/sys/param.h (grep the whole /usr/src tree and you'll find a couple). The comments in param.h suggest this value can be increased without harm to existing filesystems but suggests any new filesystems created may require this value in the future to function. If I increase MAXBSIZE in param.h will it do what I think; allow reading those darned 256k-blocked tapes? Applications of interest: gtar, pax, dd, tcopy. If I can make this work I can replace a couple of Suns (which can't read the tapes either) with FreeBSD systems. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.