The Ftape Installation Guide - Installation
ftape-3.04d.tar.gz
' (this manual is a part of it). Final
releases of the distribution can be found at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes/
You can also down-load the package from
http://www-math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape
The latter node has also some other links to floppy tape related information and might contain older versions of the ftape package as well as recent development versions. If you can't access this page at all then please try again some hours later. If this doesn't work then please drop me a short (and kind) note stating that the page appears to be down for hours. I'll see what I can do about it.
See Compiling ftape, for information on configuring and compiling the driver.
You need to run a kernel without support for ftape compiled into
the kernel image. Please check the file /proc/devices for a line
like `27 ft
'. If /proc/devices contains such a
line(1), then you
need to reconfigure your kernel without support for
ftape enabled, i.e. answer no to the
Ftape (QIC-80/Travan) support
question. Recompile and install the new kernel in the usual way.
Note that there were quite a bit of problem reports on compiling ftape with kernels of the 1.2.* series. However, some of these should vanish when compiling the drivers without the CONFIG_MODVERSIONS option. Other problems may vanish when reading through the special parts of this manual that are dedicated to those kernels (see 1.2.13). I arrived at compiling ftape with the following kernels:
2.1.34
' isn't the most
recent.
modules-1.2.8.tar.gz
' for Linux-1.2.*
modutils-2.1.34.tar.gz
' for Linux-2.0.0 and up.
In principle, new versions of the modules utilities should be able to insert modules into older kernels. Please read also the file /usr/src/linux/Documentation/modules.txt and the documentation that comes with the set of modules utilities you are using.
You can down-load the modules utilities from the same places as the kernel sources. This used to be
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/kernel/linux/
but
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/
is the primary site nowadays.
WARNING: Don't use `modutils-2.1.23.tar.gz
'. It seems that
the depmod
program contained in this package produces wrong
dependencies. This program seems to hold the view that the ftape module
depends on itself being loaded before itself which causes
modprobe
to try to load ftape before loading ftape before loading ftape
before loading ftape before loading ftape ... until this infinite recursion
causes modprobe
to abort with a core dump due to a segmentation
violation.
`modutils-2.1.34.tar.gz
' worked fine for me. With this version it
was even possible to insert ftape compiled without
CONFIG_MODVERSIONS into a 2.0.30 kernel that had been configured
for use with versioned symbols. I suggest that you solve module
insertion problem by using a recent version of the modutils
package. See CONFIG_MODVERSIONS. I have tried the 2.1.34 version of the
modutils package with a 2.0.30 kernel and it works just fine.
There is a more recent modutils package that I haven't tried.
For the time being, new versions of the modutils package seems to show up first at
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/alphabits/
You should check this location if you can't fetch the latest
`modutils
' package from another site.
mt
and tar
to use the driver (these can be
found in the GNU `cpio
' and `tar
' packages). There are also
various other backup packages that might be useful. Some of them can be
found at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/backup/
A very usable commercial backup program is bru
which is
sold by `EST
' (http://www.estinc.com).
When searching for a no-cost backup solution for large networks then you
should consider using the amanda
package available from
ftp://ftp.amanda.org/pub/amanda/
There is a special version of the GNU mt
program (see mt)
included in this package which can be found in the
`./contrib/gnumt/
' subdirectory of this ftape-3.04d distribution. The
program is automatically compiled when compiling the kernel driver
(see Compiling ftape) and is installed as `/usr/bin/ftmt
' by
default. It contains support for some special, new
ioctls that are supported by the zftape front end to the low level ftape
driver (see File System Interface). There is also a bit of
information about the use of the mt
program in this manual
(see Ioctls).
binutils
package and
gcc
).
plug and play
' controller card (also known
as `plug and pray
') then you should also get the isapnptools
package which has a www page at
http://www.roestock.demon.co.uk/isapnptools/. `plug'n play
'
cards are those controller cards that cannot be configured by setting
jumpers.
info
', `dvi
' or
`HTML
' version of the manual then you really need
texinfo-3.9
(or later) to rebuild either the `info
' or the
`dvi
' version.
perl-5
to rebuild the `HTML
' version of the manual.
(1) Of course, the ftape device in /proc/devices will also show up if any version of the ftape module is loaded.
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