Date: Tue, 07 Mar 1995 15:14:43 PST From: trost@cloud.rain.com (Bill Trost) To: mcquiggi@sfu.ca Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Kernel config for tape drive Message-ID: <bill%2B9700.009531@cloud.rain.com> In-Reply-To: <9503030546.AA19509@malibu.sfu.ca> References: <9503030546.AA19509@malibu.sfu.ca>
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Kevin McQuiggin writes:
I added a line to my config file: tape ft0 drive 2
as indicated in the 1.1 version of the FAQ, recompiled the kernel,
and after installation, the tape drive is inaccessible.....
I have only a single floppy drive on the machine....
Any help would be appreciated. Please don't tell me to upgrade to
2.0, as I want to wait for at least 2.1 to arrive and stabilize
before doing that upgrade.
Don't worry -- it doesn't work in 2.0 either. )-:
I'm in much the similar situation (the tape drive is newer, and I'm
running 2.0, but about the same otherwise other differences). I've
tried all the things you've tried, and more:
* I bought another floppy disk drive to see if that would make the
problem go away. No luck -- but I know where you might be able to
get a good deal on a 5 1/4" floppy.... (-:
* I'm spelunked in the kernel. I can tell you right now that
you can't use unit 1 for the tape drive, at least in the 2.0
release -- the code foolishly assumes that, if the unit number is
less than 2, it's gotta be a disk drive (at least, that's my
interpretation). I've tried changing that assumption, and other
fiddling, to no avail.
* The closest I've gotten is by turning on the low-level debugging
code in the floppy driver -- by doing that, I can get the kernel
probe to acknowledge that the tape drive is there (question: do
you see a mention of "ft0" when the machine boots up?). However,
under those circumstance, I always would get an I/O error when
actually trying to access the tape drive, and would eventually get
a panic-less reboot. My guess is that this slows down the machine
enough that the tape drive has an opportunity to respond to the
probe, and I don't know what's happening to the actual I/O
accesses.
My solution? I'm going to order a SCSI controller and a SCSI tape
drive. )-: I haven't gotten any useful responses from this mailing
list, and I really don't have the time (or knowledge, probably), to go
fooling around with the floppy driver while my data sits unbacked-up.
Maybe I'll hang on to the tape drive anyhow, just in case I'm feeling
exceptionally masochistic.
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