ftape
driver ftape
crashes on me when I do `...' - is that a bug?No, that is a feature ;-)
Seriously, reliable software do not crash. Especially kernels do not or
rather should not crash. If the kernel crashes upon you when you are
running ftape
, and you can show that it is ftape
that is
messing things up, regard it as a Bug That Should Be Fixed. Mail the details
to the developer (see section
email addresses
below).
ftape
keep saying `... new tape', what do I do? [You cannot do this anymore; I do not know a way of fixing it yet]
To get rid of this, do this (blindfold): login as root and say `rmmod
ftape
'. ftape
should choke a few times, give three
segmentation violations (or so), and give up life.
Check the activity LED on your floppy drive (you do have one, don't you?). If it is constantly lit, you have turned the floppy cable upside down somewhere. Check your cable between controller, tape drive and floppy drive. Usually, one (or more) of the connectors have been turned upside down, such that pin 1 in one end connects to pin 34 in the other end. (All the even-numbered pins are grounded, so you wont be able to use your floppy either). Don't worry; this cannot damage your hardware.
First, make sure you can reproduce the problem. Spurious errors are a pain in the ass, since they are just about impossible to hunt down :-/ This is a quick check list:
ftape
patches)ftape
versionftape.o
file. We may want you
run try some patches out or run a different test on your system.Increase the tracing level to 7 (just below maximum tracing) and run the
offending command again. Get the tracing data from the kernel log or
/proc/kmsg
, depending on where you harvest your error messages.
Do not try to `trim' the kernel log. You might consider something
irrelevant, which is essential to the investigator of the bug. State
exactly what you did, and what happened on your system. We might not see
the error because we use a different tape drive or another version of the
kernel!
Send your bug report to <linux-activists@niksula.hut.fi>
(and
remember to add a `X-Mn-Key: TAPE
' line in the header). You should
also mail the bug to <bas@vimec.nl>
.
You can do this two ways: either change the default trace-level (the var
`tracing
' in file `ftape-rw.c
') and recompile or say
mt -f /dev/ftape fsr <tracing-level>
The use of the fsr
command in mt
is a hack, and
will disappear with time.
/dev/nftape
, I get garbage ... why? This was a problem in `the old days', before version 0.9.10. Nowadays, the non-rewinding devices are working. If you have anything earlier, I strongly recommend you to update to the 1.13b version.
Next Chapter, Previous Chapter
Table of contents of this chapter, General table of contents
Top of the document, Beginning of this Chapter