Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 08:07:27 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com> To: Joerg Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> Cc: freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: filemarks? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912150803290.46570-100000@beppo.feral.com> In-Reply-To: <19991215100956.30691@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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>
> Actually, they can all write 2, but on QIC & alike (don't know for the
> newer Tandberg MLRs) you cannot go to EOM, then backspace over the
> second of the filemarks, and try writing from there -- you'll get a
> `write append error'. I think all other drives can do this, and the
> drive in question here was DDS, so it should be able to work with 2
> FMs.
Yet another reason why 1FM@EOT should be the default. Unfortunately, we
have too many ill-informed or fanciful or contrary users to allow this (I
tried to get this as a default for 4.0).
>
> Btw., Matt, wouldn't it make sense to automatically turn the driver
> into 1 FM mode for any "TANDBERG" drive? I don't know how their DLTs
> are announcing, though... Anything else they're building is QIC or
> upwards compatible, and AFAIK they are the only vendor still producing
> QIC drives at all.
>
> And please, default to variable mode for all the larger QIC
> drives... :)
It seems to me that rather than proliferating compiled in quirks, we
should work on the magical table that can be parsed at boot time.
> Actually, i'd rather see the historical FreeBSD behaviour restored
> where the default was variable for any QIC cartridge >= 525, and
> 512-byte fixed for anything up to QIC-150. Sure, this requires to
> read one block until the drive will announce an actual density, but
> this algorithm used to work well in previous versions of FreeBSD, and
> you have to spend the time for ``logging in'' the tape once per mount
> session anyway, so it doesn't matter. (This can take a bit of time on
> a larger QIC medium, i know.)
Yes- you should check the latest driver out, Joerg. It does a test read at
mount time. And I have people yelling it me because of the time it takes.
Can't please anyone.... a driver writer's lot is so hard ("Would you like
some cheese and crackers to go with that whine?")
-matt
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