Return to BSD News archive
#! rnews 2648 bsd
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!nsw1.news.telstra.net!news.telstra.net!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!hermes.sovam.com!sovam!Gamma.RU!srcc!not-for-mail
From: "Eugene Radchenko" <genie@qsar.chem.msu.su>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Tape file system
Date: 25 Mar 1997 17:58:04 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Chemistry, Moscow State University
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <01bc3946$15859060$6330fa9e@org-qsar2.chem.msu.su>
References: <5h0pfc$7vg@fu-berlin.de> <slrn5jbi5f.t0.ripley@nortobor.nostromo.in-berlin.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: org.chem.msu.su
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1160
Cache-Post-Path: org.chem.msu.su!unknown@org-qsar2.chem.msu.su
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37843
H. Eckert <ripley@nostromo.in-berlin.de> wrote in article
<slrn5jbi5f.t0.ripley@nortobor.nostromo.in-berlin.de>...
> gusw@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Gunther Schadow):
> > is it possible to write a file system onto a tape and then mount it
> > like a disk? Wasn't this possible on the VAX? On HP-UX you can even
> > boot from tapes, can't you? When I tried to write a disklabel onto
> > the tape, it doesn't work due to missing IOCTLs for the st0 driver.
> > Newfs doesn't work then either. Will it be easy to emulate a disk
> > with a tape drive? Or do we need a separate tape filesystem driver?
>
> This isn't possible AFAIK. The VAX isn't a good example for this
> as it does this when running VMS (which despite the POSIX tweaking
> is an entirely different operating system) but not under Ultrix.
[...]
> If you really want to have some kind of tapefs you'll certainly have
> to write a driver. Why don't you just start writing one ? :-)
I thought about this once (not for Unix) but dropped the idea after reading
in the HP SureStore manual that cartridges are certified for 2000 tape
start/stops, or approx. 100 normal backups.
I guess filesystem-type access will eat this in no time at all.
Sorry for this Genie
--
#########################################################
Eugene V. Radchenko Research associate, Computer Chemistry
E-mail: genie@qsar.chem.msu.su Fax: +7-(095)939-0290
===================================================
Axiom: Any non-trivial program contains some bugs
Corollary: If a program has no bugs, it is useless