> 1) How come the character (raw) scsi tape device read and write routines are
>  disabled (in the cdev switch)? The block read and write routines work.

You generally don't mess with tapes in anything but blocks.  At least,
that's my best estimation of why there aren't any character devices for
the tape.  The drivers were written by Julian Elischer a while back and
we just implemented the low-level parts.

> 2) I am running MRG, and playing with tapes. Doing a dump (or maybe trying
> to read the dump tape to make sure it was ok) seems to have wiped out the 
> root partition, had to rebuild it. Was using /dev/st0 (see question 1).

Ack!  Did you have any panics or errors or anything in the process?

> Am I getting out into uncharted territory here?

Yes.  I used a tape drive a while ago, but I haven't tried it recently.
It was a QIC drive and I no longer have it.  :-(

-allen

-- 
Allen Briggs - end killing - allen.briggs@vt.edu ** MacBSD == NetBSD/Mac **