Hi,
I have the pleasure to send this announcement:
osst-0.8.0 released
===================
There is good news for users that bought OnStream-SCx0 tape drives and want
to use it with Linux.
Unfortunately those tapes do not implement all the standard SCSI commands
for Serial Storage Access Devices (read: tapes), so the standard st driver
fails to operate them.
There has been a project to create a Linux driver for these devices,
initiated by OnStream. The work could be based on the Gadi Oxman's driver
for the OnStream IDE tape (DI-30), which already got integrated into the
mainstream kernel. Additionally, Terry Hardie had written a userspace
program osg using the sg onterface to access the OnStream tapes.
A real driver is released into the beta test now: osst-0.8.0.
It's a kernelspace driver, giving applications (almost) the same interface
as the st driver via the new /dev/osst* and /dev/nosst* device nodes.
Technically, it has been realized as a fifth SCSI high-level driver. The new
device nodes have major 206 and have been registered with HPA. The tapes use
a fixed blocksize of 32k.
The on-tape format should be compatible to the one used by the IDE driver,
osg and the Wind*ws software, as it's specified by OnStream specs. However,
the filemark handling has been optimized recently, so there may be some
incompatibilities wrt those.
Currently, the driver only supports 2.2 kernels, but this will be fixed
soon.
The major part of the code has been written by Willem Riede, based on Kai
Mikasara's st driver. Some fixes and framework has been done by me.
Thanks also go to the OnStream staff (especially Jack Bombeeck), SuSE (for
supporting me to work on it), and everybody who did support this project by
discussing about driver issues, testing the alpha versions, submitting
patches ...
Find out more about the driver on
http://linux1.onstream.nl/test/
and more about the tape drives on
http://www.onstream.com/server/sc50.html
On the driver's page, you will find more info on how to use the driver.
There is a tarball for download and also RPMs (compiled for a glibc-2.1
based system with 2.2.16 kernel) are available. The included README will
give you some more hints.
Please test
... and send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Kurt Garloff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Eindhoven, NL
GPG key: See mail header, key servers Linux kernel development
SuSE GmbH, Nuernberg, FRG SCSI, Security
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