Re: problem with ide-scsi and IDE tape drive

[Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk>]

Kai Makisara writes:

> Looking at your log everything seems to work perfectly from the
> point of view of the drivers. The problem is that the first write
> command (from the log cmd: a 1 0 0 3c 0 Len: 30720) is refused by
> your drive (the sense key Illegal Request). The command looks OK
> (i.e., it is a write of 60 512 byte blocks in fixed block mode).

OK...

> Does your drive only accept writes from the beginning of the tape
> (there are drives that have this limitation)?

The manual doesn't mention any such limitation, but it's not very
comprehensive.  Suggestions how I can find out whether the drive is
supposed to support arbitrarily positioned writes or not would be
welcome.

> In this case the problem is that you rewind and space forward
> between the two tar commands. You don't have to rewind between the
> commands. The same result is obtained if you just use two
> consecutive tar commands (and this means that writing only starts
> from the beginning of the tape, from the drive's point of view).

This points to an acceptable workaround.

Thanks for your help!

ttfn/rjk