<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="SGML-Tools 1.0.9"> <TITLE>Ftape-HOWTO</TITLE> <LINK HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-1.html" REL=next> </HEAD> <BODY> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-1.html">Next</A> Previous Contents <HR> <H1>Ftape-HOWTO</H1> <H2>Claus-Justus Heine, <A HREF="mailto:heine@math1.rwth-aaachen.de"><heine@math1.rwth-aachen.de></A></H2>v3.0, August 1998 <P><HR> <EM>This HOWTO discusses essential do's and dont's for the <CODE>ftape</CODE> floppy tape driver under Linux. It focusses on the newest version which is <CODE>ftape-4.02</CODE> at the time of this writing. This HOWTO is to be intended as first step help and source of information. The <CODE>ftape</CODE> driver interfaces to QIC-40, QIC-80, QIC-3010 and QIC-3020 compatible drives, and to the Iomega Ditto 2GB and Ditto Max drives. The QIC-3010 and QIC-3020 standards are also known as `Travan' (TR-2 and TR-3). These drives connect via the floppy disk controller (<B>FDC</B>) which may be either an internal FDC or inside of certain parallel port floppy tape drives. Please refer to the section <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-6.html#supp_drives">Supported drives</A> for further information. <CODE>ftape</CODE> <B>does not</B> cover SCSI or QIC-02 tape drives. DAT tape drives usually (always?) connect to a SCSI controller. This is but one of the Linux HOWTO documents. You can get an index of the HOWTOs from <A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX.html">the Linux HOWTO index</A>, while the real HOWTO's can be fetched (using <CODE>ftp</CODE>) from <CODE>sunsite.unc.edu:pub/Linux/doc/HOWTO</CODE> (this is the ``official'' place) or via the World Wide Web from <A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP">the Linux Documentation Project home page</A>.</EM> <HR> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc1">1.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-1.html">Legalese</A></H2> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc2">2.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-2.html">Revision History</A></H2> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc3">3.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-3.html">The preliminaries</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1">3.1 Other sources of information</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.2">3.2 Contacts</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.3">3.3 What is <CODE>ftape</CODE></A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc4">4.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-4.html">Getting and installing <CODE>ftape</CODE></A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.1">4.1 Getting <CODE>ftape</CODE></A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.2">4.2 Differences between <CODE>ftape-2.x</CODE>, <CODE>ftape-3.x</CODE> and <CODE>ftape-4.x</CODE> versions</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.3">4.3 Installing the driver with v2.0.x and earlier kernels</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.4">4.4 Installing the driver with v2.1.x and later kernels</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.5">4.5 Following the development of the <CODE>ftape</CODE> driver</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.6">4.6 Mixing <CODE>ftape</CODE> and floppies</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc5">5.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-5.html">The Care and Feeding of Tape and Tape Drives</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.1">5.1 Formatting</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.2">5.2 Retensioning</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.3">5.3 Drive Cleaning</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.4">5.4 Repairing de-spooled cartridges</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc6">6.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-6.html">Hardware support</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.1">6.1 Supported tape drives</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.2">6.2 Supported special controllers</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.3">6.3 Unsupported tape drives</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.4">6.4 Using an external tape drive with <CODE>ftape</CODE></A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.5">6.5 PCI motherboards and <CODE>ftape</CODE></A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc7">7.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-7.html">Backing up and restoring data</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.1">7.1 Writing an archive to a tape</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.2">7.2 Restoring an archive</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.3">7.3 Testing the archive</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.4">7.4 Putting more than one backup on a tape</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.5">7.5 Appending files to an archive</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.6">7.6 Mount/unmounting tapes</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc8">8.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-8.html">Creating an emergency boot floppy for <CODE>ftape</CODE></A></H2> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc9">9.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-9.html">Frequently Asked Questions</A></H2> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc10">10.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html">FAQ: "Compiling and installing Ftape" related questions !</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.1">10.1 What Ftape version should I use?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.2">10.2 I'm having problems getting my XYZ drive to run under the 2.0.xx kernel with the built-in driver. How do I fix this?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.3">10.3 I'm running Linux/SMP and the system just freezes when trying to access the Ftape devices!</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.4">10.4 Why does depmod complain about "undefined symbols"?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.5">10.5 "insmod" says the kernel version is wrong</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.6">10.6 "insmod" says that kernel 1.2.0 and 1.2.0 differ</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.7">10.7 Trying to compile Ftape gives me the error "modversions.h: no such file or directory"</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.8">10.8 What is this versioned symbols stuff anyway?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.9">10.9 I seem to be getting sftape instead of zftape. When I run "ftmt status" command, I get output that the Ftape docs says corresponds to sftape ( /dev/qft0: Invalid argument ). Why?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.10">10.10 My Ditto DASH/FC-20/Exabyte Accelerator card works under Microsoft Windows, but I get a drive not found type of error in /var/log/messages when trying to use it under Linux.</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.11">10.11 Ftape DMA transfers gives ECC errors</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.12">10.12 Help! I'm getting 'dmaalloc() failed' in my syslog file.</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.13">10.13 Syslogd works overtime when running Ftape</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.14">10.14 How do I change the trace-level?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.15">10.15 I'm having problems with Ftape. I'm using the latest version of Ftape from the Ftape Home Page and believe that I've located a real bug. What should I do?</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc11">11.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html">FAQ: "Using Ftape" related questions !</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.1">11.1 How fast is Ftape ?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.2">11.2 When I write to some of my tapes, they seem to spend a lot of time "shoe-shining," or repositioning instead of streaming. Is something wrong with my system?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.3">11.3 Do I have to reboot to the DOS world to format tapes? </A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.4">11.4 Is it possibly to format Ditto 2GB tapes with ftape?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.5">11.5 Is it possibly to format Ditto Max or Max Pro tapes with ftape?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.6">11.6 Ftape detects more bad sectors than DOS on QIC-3020 tapes</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.7">11.7 Is it ok that I'm not hearing the tape move when I do a fsf or a bsf with mt?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.8">11.8 Why does my XYZ backup program complain about "Invalid argument" errors?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.9">11.9 I/O errors and FDC - some explanations.</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.10">11.10 Why do I get "/dev/qft0: No such device" errors?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.11">11.11 I get "device busy" when I make multiple backups on a tape using some script.</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.12">11.12 How do I "..." with tar?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.13">11.13 What block-size should I use with tar ?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.14">11.14 Where can I find the tar/mt/cpio/dd binaries - sources - manpages?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.15">11.15 If I use tapers compression, is it a bad idea to use the compression with zftape, or would it be better to not use tapers compression, and let zftape do it?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.16">11.16 How does zftape compression compare to say gzip -9?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.17">11.17 I don't trust compression, but hear that the sftape interface is going away. What should I do?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.18">11.18 Ftape says "This tape has no 'Linux raw format"</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.19">11.19 Can I exchange tapes with someone using DOS?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.20">11.20 How does `mt eom' work when you've started overwriting a tape in the middle?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.21">11.21 When I made backups before using taper, under the 2.0.29 ftape my drive didn't support fsf, under the new zftape it does, why would this be, and what exactly is fsf ?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.22">11.22 What exactly is the difference between ftape, and zftape?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.23">11.23 What is the difference between a rewinding, and non rewinding drive?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.24">11.24 Can someone tell me how to use mt to rewind my TR-3 drive one record using zftape record, so I can verify it?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.25">11.25 By non-rewinding, they mean that it doesn't automatically rewind, correct? It doesn't mean that under no circumstances it will rewind, right? I tried using /dev/zqft0, and it instantly rewinds the tape.</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.26">11.26 What is the difference between what mt considers a record and what it considers a file?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.27">11.27 Reusing tapes with zftape without reformatting the tape.</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.28">11.28 This script implements a simple contents listing for the zftape package using the "MTIOCVOLINFO" ioctl.</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc12">12.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-12.html">FAQ: "Tape and Drivers" related questions !</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.1">12.1 What are good makers of Travan tapes?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.2">12.2 Where can I obtain the QIC standards?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.3">12.3 Is the Iomega Ditto 2GB drive supported?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.4">12.4 Is the Iomega Ditto Max drive supported?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.5">12.5 Is the Iomega Ditto Max Pro drive supported?</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc13">13.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-13.html">FAQ: Miscellaneous !</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-13.html#ss13.1">13.1 How to subscribe to the Ftape Mailing List?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-13.html#ss13.2">13.2 How to un-subscribe from the Ftape Mailing List?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-13.html#ss13.3">13.3 Links to related information.</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc14">14.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-14.html">Debugging the <CODE>ftape</CODE> driver</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-14.html#ss14.1">14.1 The kernel/<CODE>ftape</CODE> crashes on me when I do `...' - is that a bug?</A> <LI><A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-14.html#ss14.2">14.2 OK, it's a bug ...ehhh... feature - How do I submit a report?</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc15">15.</A> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-15.html">Contributions</A></H2> <HR> <A HREF="Ftape-HOWTO-1.html">Next</A> Previous Contents </BODY> </HTML>