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Re: Implement mode_select for atapi tape drives



On Sat, 8 Aug 2009, Marc Balmer wrote:

The attached patch implements the mode_select operation for atapi tape drives. It is enabled only via a new quirk setting, so existing drives that haven't explicitly been determined to support this op won't even attempt it. (This is essentially the same patch as in PR kern/34832.)

I've been running this in my own systems for about 3 1/2 years now, with my Seagate STT3401A (Travan 20/40GB) drive. I'll submit a separate patch later with a cleaned-up quick setting for this drive.

This patch is actually required for the above tape drive to operate properly under NetBSD. The drive supports both 512-byte and 1024-byte block sizes, but defaults to 1024-bytes. Without this patch there it isn't possible to write 512-byte records to the tape!

Any objections to committing this?

Why do you use

memset(&atapi_select, 0, atapi_select_len);

instead of

memset(&atapi_select, 0, sizeof(atapi_select));

and zap the u_int atapi_select_len variable?

Good question!

Basically, this whole routine was copied almost verbatim from the equivalent code in sys/dev/scsipi/st_scsi.c which also calculates the number of bytes to clear. Since it worked, I never looked any further.

There is always the chance that the computed value of atapi_select_len (based on the _actual_ size of the device's page_0) is less than the possible maximum size of page_0. So we could save a few nanoseconds by clearing fewer bytes. In practice I don't expect this to make any real difference.

If I change my patch, I'd want to update the calculation in st_scsi.c as well, to keep them in sync.

Thanks for the quick review!



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