On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Paul Lussier wrote:
> Ahh, interesting. That probably explains why RH ships with mt-st
> rather than the gnu cpio package.
And why Debian patches GNU mt so heavily.
Here is my summary of the four (yes, four) distinct 'mt' commands I have
examined today:
Debian mt 2.4.2-38
Appears to be a merge of GNU mt 2.4.2 and mt-st circa 0.5.
Provides only the 'datcompression' command.
Most informative 'status' output.
mt-st 0.6
Provides only the 'compression' command.
Can do 'status' when drive is not in 'ONLINE' state.
More up-to-date SCSI density code list than any other 'mt' examined.
Has more commands than any other 'mt' examined.
mt-st 0.5b
Ships with Red Hat Linux 6.x.
Provides both 'datcompression' and 'compression' commands.
GNU mt 2.4.2
Providers neither 'compression' nor 'datcompression'.
Output is cryptic at best.
The least useful of all 'mt' programs examined.
The 'datcompression' has one major advantage that I can see: With no
arguments, it will report the current status of the drive's compression
mode. The 'compression' command from mt-st cannot report status; only set
it. Debian's mt's 'datcompression' also reports if the drive is compression
capable.
The 'compression' command will set compression with no arguments, or with
an argument of '1'. With any other arguments, it will turn compression off.
There is also a 'defcompression' command which will set the default
compression the drive will use when it first loads a tape.
None of this even touches the 'stinit' command that Bruce pointed out.
Are we sufficiently confused yet?
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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