#TAR for Amiga ?
13 messages in this thread
Larry,
Hi, can you tell me more about the tape drive you are using and how it is
hooked up to your Amiga. I'am interested in getting one and would like to
find out more before I buy one.
|| BY THE **+++++ Judd Pape +++++** BY THE ||
. POWER OF THE AMIGA ******* 72017,1606 ******* POWER OF THE AMIGA ..
Judd,
I am using an Archive Viper, 60 meg QIC tape drive, attached with an
Emulex MT-02 SCSI-QIC adapter. It hooks up like any other SCSI device, but
of course requires software to use it. I use Markus Wandel's tape handler
software and use tar to write or read files.
-larry
Larry,
Where did you locate the Emulex adapter? I've been calling around for one,
but haven't had much luck. Also, do you know if the the Colorado Memory
Systems tape drives are QIC compatible?
Thanks,
Greg
Greg White / MicroSearch 72230,1617
We listen to our customers..carefully
Greg,
The one I have came with the unit, and is out of a Sun 'shoebox'. I don't
know where you might locate the Emulex controller. Archive does make one
too, and probably a few other companies.
I don't know about the Colorado Memory System units. I do know that a lot
of IBMPC(lone) drives are not SCSI, and many operate off the floppy port
using a completely different drive interface than the QIC-36 that the
Emulex supplies.
-larry
Larry,
I haven't tried the MWTAPE but the BTNtape (with some mods) handles my unit
OK.
My problem is the TAR, or at least the one recently uploaded to CIS – praps
you have a different version and could UL. It has a number of bugs and/or
flaws.
Specifically …
(a) it does not preserve Amiga file-protection attributes, being
UNIX-derived it appears to make some effort to map attributes to UNIX
permissions – poorly in my opinion. It completely loses h,s,p,a attributes
BUT appears to have a bug in that it ADDS these attributes to restored
directories (and resets date to "today")…, they end up hsparw-d !!. I
have disassembled the code and find an apparent faulty understanding of
what defaults (e.g. 1 or 0) set/clear proper flags.
(b) Does not appear to correctly handle specification of "root" directory.
E.g. if I want to backup all of DH0: I cannot CD to DH0: and ask for "tar
-cvf TAPE: "DH0:" (or tar -vcf TAPE:) cuz it appends a "\" and sez "DH0:/"
not found of some similar. I can only get it to do a full volume via the
kludge of CD'ing to a subdir (e.g. CD DH0:c) then asking tar to backup its
'parent' e.g. "tar -cvf TAPE: /"
(c) It does not support compression of archives being created… since
streaming tape on a multitasking system are rarely kept in streaming mode
the CPU overhead for compression is well spent feeding a slow device.
I'd appreciate your thoughts (or another tar !) (or source !!)
– da – via Whap!
Daryl:
I'm not positive about this, BUT I think that TAR supports compression if
you use the -Z option, AND have the COMPRESS program in your path (or
possibly C directory).
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
Mike,
Hmmmm. I'll try to find a compress and load it to C: I understood from the
docs that decompress worked (!? but not compress ?!). In UNIX it does an
_exec() or something similar but I would be surprised (delighted) if AMI
version could do so… disassembly quick look showed that many of the
UNIX-related capabilities had been stubbed-out for the ami version. – da –
via Whap!
Daryl,
I don't know if the version I have is diffeent or not. It does seem to
handle things properly, or at least as properly as can be expected, given
the Unix and Amigados differences.
(a) I haven't checked all the bits, but directories seem to be handled
properly, with no protection bits added
The date is indeed messed up. Looks like it could use some work in this
area.
(b) I tried the following (after CDing to DH1:),,,
tar cvf tape:r dh1:
tar cvf tape:r "dh1:"
tar cvf tape:r :
and they all worked. Actually, it makes sense to not use the device name in
case you want to restore to another device. I personally would use the ':'
alone to specify root dir of a disk.
(c) I see copression does not work on the Amiga version. I had not
previously tried it, since, even though the tape does not stream, the
compression overhead is WAY more than I want to put up with, even on my
3000.
Looking through my Usenet stuff, I see that I have both executable, a patch
to the original tar, and source, so I will bundle it all up and send it off
to the LIB tonight.
-larry
Larry,
Thanks – I look forward to getting the source. The executable that I have
is 26580 bytes from a CIS upload within the past 5 weeks.
I definitely have that wierd directory protection-bit stuff on RESTORE and
disassembly of the code shows where it is doing it, so hopefully you've got
a better version. I hadn't tried the ":" notation to get root but the
other forms don't work here – 'CEPT what is the TAPE:r notation ? is that
"r" an actual filename or something unique to the MWTAPE program (BTNTAPE
uses things like tape:$ ).
I will probably come to agree viz the compression – once I've figured out
how to include it, especially since I've already partitioned off the HD
into 2 60MB and a 30MB sized to fit the (uncompressed) tape.
Any-who… looking forward to your upload. – da – via Whap!
Daryl,
tape:r is unique to Markus Wandel's tape handler. The 'r' stands for
rewind, which means it will rewind the tape before reading or writing.
tape:a means 'append', and is for when you want to add a file to the tape
without destroying what's already on it. tape: by itself does the operation
from wherever it is positioned. Of course if positioned other than at the
beginning of tape or end of recorded media, you will not be able to do any
write operations.
-larry
Larry, Thanks – and I see that another TAR has been uploaded so will visit
that, notation mentioning Jonathan Hue as the original porter from UNIX is
good news for mew since that TAR is the one that the author of the BTNtape
handler specifically mentions in his docs… – da – via Whap!
Larry,
What is an Archive Viper and what does the Emulex MT-02 SCSI-QIC adapter
do? Can you also tell me where you can pick them up at ?
|| BY THE **+++++ Judd Pape +++++** BY THE ||
. POWER OF THE AMIGA ******* 72017,1606 ******* POWER OF THE AMIGA ..
Judd,
The Archive Viper is a QIC (Quarter Inch Cartridge) tape drive that is
manufactured by Archive. It will hold 45 megabytes of data on a 450 ft.
tape, and 60 megabytes on a 600 ft. tape.
The viper is a QIC-36 interface drive (QIC-36 is a standard that
specifies the electrical interface of the drive). The Emulex MT-02 is a
SCSI to QIC-36 adapter that allows the drive to be used as a SCSI device,
similarly to what an Adaptec 4000 will do for allowing an ST-506 disk drive
to be used on a SCSI bus.
I really don't know where you might find them.
-larry