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Date:      Wed, 25 Dec 1996 01:44:01 +0100
From:      se@freebsd.org (Stefan Esser)
To:        joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org (FreeBSD-current users), cg@archimedia.khs-linz.ac.at
Subject:   Re: DAT: reading with blocksize=256K
Message-ID:  <Mutt.19961225014401.se@x14.mi.uni-koeln.de>
In-Reply-To: <199612240747.IAA10234@uriah.heep.sax.de>; from J Wunsch on Dec 24, 1996 08:47:35 %2B0100
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.91.961224002318.181A-100000@spock.my.domain> <199612240747.IAA10234@uriah.heep.sax.de>

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On Dec 24, j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) wrote:
> As Christian Gusenbauer wrote:
> 
> > I just got a DAT cartridge with a tar backup. It seems that the backup 
> > was made with a blocksize of 256K. Isn't it possible to get the data into 
> > my pc with current (it looks like there's a limit of 64K)??
> 
> This has been discussed at lenth already: it's currently limited by
> physio(9) to chunks of at most 64 KB size, due to the limitations in
> the scatter/gather list of some SCSI controllers that don't allow for
> more than 16 scatter/gather segments.

I can't talk for any other driver, but in case of the NCR driver,
a simple rebuild of the kernel with MAX_SCATTER (in /sys/pci/ncr.c)
set to 129 will allow to read 256KB tape blocks.

(I guess the same is true for most other SCSI host adapters, that
don't have a lower adapter firmware limit.)

The drivers may be sub-optimal for typical (shorter) transfers,
then, but if you just need to read THAT tape ...

Regards, STefan



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