Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:51:39 -0600 From: Tom Russo <russo@bogodyn.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Contradicting the answer to Re: Answering my own question Re: Iomega REV drive, FreeBSD 4.11 Message-ID: <20050817215139.GA18463@bogodyn.org> In-Reply-To: <20050724162155.GA11548@bogodyn.org> References: <20050722023347.GA5783@bogodyn.org> <20050724162155.GA11548@bogodyn.org>
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On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 10:21:55AM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo@bogodyn.org> flavor, containing: > I'm answering my own question on the mailing list, just to get what I found > into the archives in case anyone else has this question. > > On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 08:33:47PM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo@bogodyn.org> flavor, containing: > > I'm running FreeBSD 4.11. I last updated from STABLE in January: > > > > FreeBSD bogodyn.org 4.11-STABLE FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE #0: Sat Jan 22 13:10:32 MST 2005 russo@bogodyn.org:/users2/obj/usr/src/sys/BOGODYN i386 > > > > I just purchased an external SCSI Iomga REV 35MB removable medium drive. > > > [...] > > When I attach the device and camcontrol rescan all, I get this in the > > /var/log/messages: > > > > Jul 21 19:22:52 bogodyn /kernel: cd1: <Iomega RRD 84.B> Removable CD-ROM SCSI-4 > > device > [...] > > That is, the drive is detected, but as a removable CDROM, > > This is not peculiar to BSD. Low-level SCSI utilities in the SCSI controller > at boot time also fail to recognize this thing as a disk drive, and even > on Windows it shows up as a CD-ROM. The only way to write data to it is to > use a windows-only driver. And since it doesn't use an ISO-9660 file system, > the only way to read data off of it is with a windows-only driver, too. So > the thing is a paperweight unless one is using Windows. One can use > the windows explorer to copy files into it, and one could use it to back up > files if they're on a BSD machine shared by Samba. Useless for system recovery, > but perhaps barely functional as a data backup. > > Live and learn. I just received a note from a member of the amanda-users mailing list, contradicting what I wrote above several weeks ago. Apparently the Iomega REV drive uses a UDF filesystem and functions as a DVD-RAM at the system level, even though it probes as a CD-ROM drive. This person has been using one as a backup device on a SuSE Linux box for a while. Since posting the original query I finally upgraded to FreeBSD 5.4. Unfortunately, to use it one requires read/write access to UDF filesystems, and BSD 5.4 has only read-only support for UDF. So to amend my earlier report of the uselessness of the Iomega REV drive: FreeBSD 4.11 can't use it because it lacks UDF support FreeBSD 5.x might be able to read them It would be possible, were there read/write support for UDF, to use the thing It is not limited to Windows, one needs only read/write UDF support. Which leads to a final question: Is there any work being done on read/write support for UDF filesystems? Might 6.0 get this capability? -- Tom Russo KM5VY SAR502 DM64ux http://www.swcp.com/~russo/ Tijeras, NM QRPL#1592 K2#398 SOC#236 AHTB#1 "The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort." -- Norton Juster
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