From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 17 06:54:33 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [8.8.178.115]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78890B31 for ; Fri, 17 May 2013 06:54:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from matthias.andree@gmx.de) Received: from mout.gmx.net (mout.gmx.net [212.227.17.22]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EEE1D99B for ; Fri, 17 May 2013 06:54:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mailout-de.gmx.net ([10.1.76.30]) by mrigmx.server.lan (mrigmx001) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0MAiyD-1UoYQ833c3-00BtKe for ; Fri, 17 May 2013 08:54:31 +0200 Received: (qmail invoked by alias); 17 May 2013 06:54:31 -0000 Received: from f049230253.adsl.alicedsl.de (EHLO mandree.no-ip.org) [78.49.230.253] by mail.gmx.net (mp030) with SMTP; 17 May 2013 08:54:31 +0200 X-Authenticated: #428038 X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX1/KdJoJcsvKdFLQGeJWzm+Rvk11qNZckYFhbCrKc0 XKP/GBn636L5ec Received: from [127.0.0.1] (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by apollo.emma.line.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A966B23D2B1 for ; Fri, 17 May 2013 08:54:28 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <5195D424.70302@gmx.de> Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 08:54:28 +0200 From: Matthias Andree User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130510 Thunderbird/17.0.6 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: tape (sa0) on sparc64 ? References: <0D672BB1-1928-4F7A-BF72-CA7EE15D0563@gid.co.uk> <20130517003058.GW77641@eureka.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.4.6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Y-GMX-Trusted: 0 X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 06:54:33 -0000 Am 17.05.2013 02:56, schrieb Zaphod Beeblebrox: > On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > >> On Thursday, 16 May 2013 at 19:56:14 -0400, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote: >>> On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Bob Bishop wrote: >>>> On 16 May 2013, at 21:51, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote: >>>> >> >> > [about my tape drive not working] > > >> The obvious question: can you write tapes and read them back? My >> experience with DDS tapes was of extreme unreliability. The age >> doesn't make things any easier. >> > > Well... therein lies my other suspicion. I don't have any DDS4 tapes to > try writing, but the DDS3 tapes I have fail to write. > > ... but they don't even try. The tape spools up when inserted and "mt > offl" works (ejects the tape) and the drive doesn't indicate any error at > this point --- but it doesn't even try to start moving for either read or > write. Have you used dd, tar, or pax, to actually write data? I suppose newer DDS drives would not actually engage the tape to their head drum until you were actually reading/writing, in order to reduce wear and tear of tape and heads. Not that it helps you now: Personally, after a few first steps with DDS1DC and DDS2, I dropped helical scan stuff because I often found that I could read tapes only on the same drive that had written them (I had three drives around in the late 1990s/early 2000); no matter if the heads were cleaned or not, and I moved on going for for optical disks and linear tape (which includues MLR/SLR, DLT, SuperDLT, LTO; personally I used SLR2, SLR4DC and SLR6 aka SLR24).