Date: Sat, 25 Apr 1998 18:46:09 -0500 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: does CAM do this? Message-ID: <199804252346.SAA03718@nospam.hiwaay.net> In-Reply-To: Message from Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com> of "Sat, 25 Apr 1998 14:44:47 PDT." <199804252144.OAA28439@feral.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Matthew Jacob writes: > > What is the blocksize of the current tape record? > > Unless you're tape drive is clairvoyant, you can't know that > until you read the record (or attempt to). And that's apparently what the SGI Irix "mt blksize" command does. Additionally it reports the min and max blocksize supported, and the "recommended" blocksize SGI's utilities will use unless instructed otherwise, or they inherit a blocksize from the device. Yes, I've seen a number of tar tapes with 512 byte blocks (they didn't know), and have one source that likes to write 1M blocksize (he thought it would be faster and save space on the tape). Unless I've messed up here, my "ARCHIVE Python 28388-XXX 4.CM" will read a compressed tape with no way of me knowing that it is doing so. While an enhanced "mt status" could query many tape drives and report on current tape position, it would be very nice if there was a way to report if the tape was written using a hardware compression method. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199804252346.SAA03718>