From owner-freebsd-current Mon May 8 8:52:28 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from wall.polstra.com (rtrwan160.accessone.com [206.213.115.74]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B61A937B6E6; Mon, 8 May 2000 08:52:24 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) Received: from vashon.polstra.com (vashon.polstra.com [206.213.73.13]) by wall.polstra.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA06599; Mon, 8 May 2000 08:52:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) From: John Polstra Received: (from jdp@localhost) by vashon.polstra.com (8.9.3/8.9.1) id IAA62838; Mon, 8 May 2000 08:52:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 08:52:22 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200005081552.IAA62838@vashon.polstra.com> To: msmith@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Undocumented tape devices in pax(1) In-Reply-To: <200005072348.QAA12373@mass.cdrom.com> References: <200005072348.QAA12373@mass.cdrom.com> Organization: Polstra & Co., Seattle, WA Cc: current@freebsd.org Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In article <200005072348.QAA12373@mass.cdrom.com>, Mike Smith wrote: > > Interesting. I've never encountered a tape device to which the buffer > cache was applicable, except for the mythical SunOS swap-to-tape story, Back in the days when Unix ran on PDP-11s you could actually put a filesystem on a tape and mount it -- if you were insane enough to sit there and wait for it. The block devices were intended for that. > and the 'r' has always been "rewind" for as long as I can remember. I think you're mistaken. Unix tape devices traditionally rewound by default on their last close. The non-rewind device has historically had an "n" in front of it (when it existed at all). E.g., /dev/rmt0 was a character device which rewound on last close, while /dev/nrmt0 was a character device which did not rewind on last close. There was also a /dev/mt0 which was a block device that rewound on last close, and a /dev/nmt0 which ... well, you get the idea. John -- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence." -- Chögyam Trungpa To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message