Proper error reporting to the user.

[Michele Marie Dalene]

I notice that sometimes when using the current IOSCSITAPE DRIVER it will say for an error:
Not implemented.

that doesn't help much. If I could get ti to report a SCSI IO error status message then I could figure out where it is having problems. and work on making the errors more "user friendly"

where does the software trap errors and which routine should I modify to provide more useful error status messages?

I also found that doing multiple tape Tar backups will fail after the first tape. I thought it was because the tape was write protected (it was). then I gave it a go with the right protect disabled on another day and same error message. Which doesn't help me as it says tar, function not implemented. That don't help!

on single tape TARs it works okay. but as I said, multiple tapes do not work correctly. I am using the standard tar of 10.5.8 (leopard) and the IOSCSITape was ported to 10.5.8 using the latest Leopard Xcode system. It is running on A PowerMac G5 with 4gb of ram and 2ghz dual processor. Scsi card is a Adaptec 29160W. Tape unit is connected to its own channel.

The same machine also runs Debian squeeze PPC. and the tape loader is a Powervault 122t. Debian has MTX and the aic-7xxx drivers and it runs great with the tape unit.

The tar I was using for this from xcode/leopard is:
tar (GNU tar) 1.15.1

I even tried using the lastest tar from gnu and I get the same error. Heres my latest one
tar (GNU tar) 1.27

[Jesse Peterson]

Way late reply here, and my apologies Michele!

Yes the variable blocking mode in IOSCSITape is the least tested largely because I don't have a tape drive that supports variable blocking mode. :)

When you say you're getting the message "Not implemented" what do you mean? Is mt outputting this? Is this a log file entry somewhere? There are a couple not-implemented IOCTL calls that mt might perform, but the text "Not implemented" is not in the source code anywhere.

Also I'm curious if, when you insert a new tape, you rewind the tape before using it do things perform okay? Rewinding resets the some of the values back to normal.

As you may have noticed the project moved to GitHub so if you have any code contributions or improvements don't hesitate to submit a pull request! :)

Cheers,

- Jesse

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ioscsitape-discuss" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ioscsitape-disc...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Jesse Peterson]

Gotcha. I've not tested tar's multiple volume capability so without some more information or log entries or command outputs or anything I don't know how much I'll be able to help.

Do send those along to look into further if you're able to and thanks,

- Jesse

On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 9:47 PM, Michele Marie Dalene <bich...@gmail.com> wrote:

My tape drive is a Dell vs80 power vault dlt so tapes always start at the beginning. It is not the Apple and gnu tat that reports this error an the multiple volume option at the beginning of the next tape. 

That is all I know. 

Sent from my iPhone