Am 31. Aug, 2000 schwäzte plug@arcticmail.com so:

> 
> In other Unices (read: SYSV), I think that the
> different designations are for different tape
> densities (bits per inch).  "l" is low density,
> "m" is medium density, and "a" is for, um,

This is what I'm remembering from AIX, SunOS and Solaris.

> asinine density.  There are usually "n" devices
> also, for no-rewind.  I suppose that for newer

Yup. I got the great pleasure of ab^H^Husing the n devices to recover
data some netbackup couldn't see. That was just waaaay too exciting, so I
got someone else to start doing backups :).

> tape drives, density select could be used to
> enable/disable compression.  mt in Linux has
> a "datcompression" command that I use.

There we go. Skipped over a few options in mt when I looked at the man
pages earlier today. Now I just have to wait for bbnplanet to get a clue,
so I can access something outside of Speed Choice again....

> Also, in some Unices, they have two entirely
> different sets of special files for interfacing
> with tape drive drives.  One set is a SYSV-style
> interface (ioctl?) and the other is a BSD-style
> interface.  IIRC, Solaris and/or HP-UX is this
> way.

Wasn't aware of this. Danke for the info.

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
#  der.hans@LuftHans.com   home.pages.de/~lufthans/   www.Opnix.com
#  Keine Ahnung, was ich dir sagen soll,
#  keine Ahnung und keinen (.)plan. -- die Toten Hosen