From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Mar 7 15:18:31 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id PAA29566 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 7 Mar 1995 15:18:31 -0800 Received: from jli (jli.portland.or.us [199.2.111.1]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id PAA29558 for ; Tue, 7 Mar 1995 15:18:13 -0800 Received: from cumulus by jli with uucp (Smail3.1.28.1 #23) id m0rm8VT-000IgEC; Tue, 7 Mar 95 15:17 PST From: trost@cloud.rain.com (Bill Trost) Received: by emacs (GNU Emacs 19.28.0.2) with vm; Tue, 07 Mar 1995 15:03:52 PST To: mcquiggi@sfu.ca cc: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Kernel config for tape drive In-Reply-To: <9503030546.AA19509@malibu.sfu.ca> References: <9503030546.AA19509@malibu.sfu.ca> Message-Id: Date: Tue, 07 Mar 1995 15:14:43 PST Sender: questions-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Kevin McQuiggin writes: I added a line to my config file: tape ft0 drive 2 as indicated in the 1.1 version of the FAQ, recompiled the kernel, and after installation, the tape drive is inaccessible..... I have only a single floppy drive on the machine.... Any help would be appreciated. Please don't tell me to upgrade to 2.0, as I want to wait for at least 2.1 to arrive and stabilize before doing that upgrade. Don't worry -- it doesn't work in 2.0 either. )-: I'm in much the similar situation (the tape drive is newer, and I'm running 2.0, but about the same otherwise other differences). I've tried all the things you've tried, and more: * I bought another floppy disk drive to see if that would make the problem go away. No luck -- but I know where you might be able to get a good deal on a 5 1/4" floppy.... (-: * I'm spelunked in the kernel. I can tell you right now that you can't use unit 1 for the tape drive, at least in the 2.0 release -- the code foolishly assumes that, if the unit number is less than 2, it's gotta be a disk drive (at least, that's my interpretation). I've tried changing that assumption, and other fiddling, to no avail. * The closest I've gotten is by turning on the low-level debugging code in the floppy driver -- by doing that, I can get the kernel probe to acknowledge that the tape drive is there (question: do you see a mention of "ft0" when the machine boots up?). However, under those circumstance, I always would get an I/O error when actually trying to access the tape drive, and would eventually get a panic-less reboot. My guess is that this slows down the machine enough that the tape drive has an opportunity to respond to the probe, and I don't know what's happening to the actual I/O accesses. My solution? I'm going to order a SCSI controller and a SCSI tape drive. )-: I haven't gotten any useful responses from this mailing list, and I really don't have the time (or knowledge, probably), to go fooling around with the floppy driver while my data sits unbacked-up. Maybe I'll hang on to the tape drive anyhow, just in case I'm feeling exceptionally masochistic.