tlug: Ftape

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

Any ftape experts out there?  My dad is working really hard to get a
floppy tape drive working on his Mandrake Linux system.  He's pretty
new to Linux (a couple months), but working ahrd at learning it.
Unfortunately, I know basicaly nothing about ftape and very little
about Linux tape issues in general.  Can anybody shed a little
light on his situation, as detailed below?

TIA,

Jonathan

----- Forwarded message from Douglas Byrne <dbyrne@example.com> -----

> I hope that you can shed some light on the error messages I've been
> getting.
> 
> First I will describe what I did to try to make it work.
> 
> In linusconf I added an entry, which is one way to get things in fstab
> with out a lot of tricky editing, for /dev/ftape and when that didn't
> work I added one for /dev/tape.
> 
> The first one made an entry in fstab of:
> /dev/ftape  /mnt/tape auto,user,exec,dev,suid,rw 1 1
> 
> The second made an entry in fstab of:
> /dev/tape  /mnt/tape  auto,exec,dev,suid,rw  1 1
> 
> In conjunction with them I added, per the ftape instructions, an entry
> in /etc/conf.modules of:
> alias char-major-27       zftape
> options ftape ft_fdc_driver=bpck-fdc:trakker,none,none,none
> 
> I've also verified that all the modules for ftape are in lib/modules and
> the devices are in /dev according to the list in the ftape 4.02 readme.
> 
> In the ftape installation guide I ran the modprobe, as they say to do to
> test your installation if you have compiled and installed it from
> scratch, to see if the modules are really there and that linux can find
> them.
> 
> They said to modprobe zftape, ftape-internal, trakker, and bpck-fdc;
> which I did.
> 
> Trakker and bpck-fdc came back with a "can't locate module" message yet
> in
> 
> lib/modules/2.2.13/misc there is a bpck.o, ftape.o, and zftape.o
> 
> lib/modules.2.2.13/boot/misc has bpck.o
> 
> lib/modules.2.2.13/fb/misc has bpck.o and zftape.o
> 
> lib/modules.2.2.13/smp has bpck.o, ftape.o, and zftape.o
> 
> lib/modules.2.2.13/smp-fb/misc has bpck.o, ftape.o, and zftape.o
> 
> When I ran modprobe with bpck alone it found it, at least I have to
> assume so as it did not come back with an error message.
> 
> I'm at a loss to come up with something else to do, I hope you can
> explain what some of these things mean and maybe point me in the right
> direction of what to ask , and where to find, the "gurus" for ftape.
> 
> If I went out and bought a scsi tape drive, I would still be using (most
> likely) kdat backup and I would hate to see the same ugly message of
> "there is no tape in the drive" after spending about $450.00. 
> 
----- End forwarded message -----
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