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Date:      Fri, 10 Apr 1998 15:16:33 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        "Justin T. Gibbs" <gibbs@narnia.plutotech.com>, FreeBSD current users <FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        FreeBSD-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: compression on Exabyte 8700LT?
Message-ID:  <19980410151633.34010@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <199804100449.WAA16931@narnia.plutotech.com>; from Justin T. Gibbs on Thu, Apr 09, 1998 at 10:49:14PM -0600
References:  <199804091527.QAA09483@albatross.mcc.ac.uk> <199804100449.WAA16931@narnia.plutotech.com>

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On Thu,  9 April 1998 at 22:49:14 -0600, Justin T. Gibbs wrote:
> I don't know why this was sent to questions.  It was started on SCSI
> which seems to be where it belongs...

I saw it on -scsi and -questions.  Since it related to -current, I
followed up there.  The copy to -questions was a one-off to tell
people where it had gone.

>> -CURRENT people: I'm using the old SCSI driver.  The tape is set to
>> start up in compressed mode, and the DC LED is illuminated all the
>> time.  This looks to me as if something in the driver is explicitly
>> disabling compression, or just possibly that the driver is guessing
>> the size of the tape and stopping (with EIO) when it reaches this
>> point.
>
> Neither the old driver, nor the CAM driver performs any type of guessing
> about the size of the tape.

I didn't think so.  I was just wondering why the capacity was so much
less than the nominal capacity.

>> The other point is that it's still returning EIO.  I know there's been
>> some discussion about this before, and ISTR that it was inconclusive
>> ("that's the way our grandfathers did it").  While looking at the
>> problem, I came across a program I wrote in my BSD/OS days back in
>> 1992, and I note that even then BSD/OS returned ENOSPC when it got to
>> the end of the tape.  This makes a whole lot more sense, and it
>> obviously seems to have withstood the test of time.  How about it?
>
> The decision was that it should return ENOSPC.  The CAM driver does
> return ENOSPC.  I have patches, in my CAM tree, to ensure that dump
> and restore correctly deal with ENOSPC as an EOT condition.  

Good.

> Someone should probably check pax, cpio, and tar.

I'll definitely check tar.

>> Would I get an improvement on either of these points if I installed
>> CAM?
>
> Probably.  You may want to wait for the weekend though.  I'm "this close"
> to finishing the BusLogic driver, and I intend to release a new snapshot
> at that time.  This will also include some improvements to the tape
> driver.

Good.  I'll do that.  Is it now in -CURRENT?

>> I know that CAM can't handle compression switching yet, but can
>> it do compression if it's enabled on the drive?
>
> The next snapshot will have compression and density control support.
> Ken's already implemented, and tested it.

Great
Greg
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