From owner-freebsd-current Sun May 7 7:42:59 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mail.inka.de (quechua.inka.de [212.227.14.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3870237B623 for ; Sun, 7 May 2000 07:42:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from daemon@mips.inka.de) Received: from bigeye.rhein-neckar.de (uucp@) by mail.inka.de with local-bsmtp id 12oSGe-0007X7-00; Sun, 7 May 2000 16:42:48 +0200 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by bigeye.rhein-neckar.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) id QAA16124 for freebsd-current@freebsd.org; Sun, 7 May 2000 16:39:17 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from daemon) From: naddy@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) Subject: Re: Undocumented tape devices in pax(1) Date: 7 May 2000 16:39:16 +0200 Message-ID: <8f3v6k$fnk$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> References: To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Kris Kennaway wrote: > Can someone explain to me why pax(1) has (undocumented) switches which > select some tape devices, but apparently randomly numbered ones: Note that these switches appear only in pax' tar compatibility personality, which isn't used in FreeBSD. And the reason they're there is because old versions of tar had them. I'm looking at 4.3BSD's usr/src/bin/tar.c right now, and it supports -[014578] to select the respective "/dev/rmt#" device. > These are selectable through -0, -1, -4, etc. Nevermind the fact that they > point to devices which have never existed in FreeBSD, but why on earth > wouldn't you want -2, -3, or -6? Historical reasons. Back in 4.3BSD, bits 0 and 1 of the minor number seem to have specified the device, bit 2 marked non-rewinding, bit 3 6250bpi (high density?). That explains rmt[0145] well enough, although rmt[78] remain unclear. > Anyway, does anyone see the point in leaving these in (changing the > devices to /dev/rsa<#> and documenting their existence), or should I rip > them out? OpenBSD only changed "rmt" to "rst" ("rsa" for us), which isn't particularly useful. Solaris uses 0..7 to select an entry from /etc/default/tar, which specifies device name, block size, and tape size. I guess mapping -[01] to rsa[01], and -[45] to nrsa[01] still makes about the most sense. Unless you intend to revive pax' tar personality under FreeBSD (which would suggest merging in OpenBSD's changes), I'd say just leave it. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message