./_Man_SunOS_4.1.3_html/html4/ar.4s.html

Manual page for AR(4S)

ar - Archive 1/4 inch Streaming Tape Drive

AVAILABILITY

Sun-3 and Sun-4 systems only.

DESCRIPTION

The Archive tape controller is a Sun `QIC-II' interface to an Archive streaming tape drive. It provides a standard tape interface to the device, see mtio.4 with some deficiencies listed under BUGS below.

The maximum blocksize for the raw device is limited only by available memory.

FILES

/dev/rar*
/dev/nrar*: non-rewinding

DIAGNOSTICS

ar*: would not initialize
ar*: already open: The tape can be opened by only one process at a time

ar*: no such drive

ar*: no cartridge in drive

ar*: cartridge is write protected

ar: interrupt from unitialized controller %x

ar*: many retries, consider retiring this tape

ar*: %b error at block # %d punted

ar*: %b error at block # %d

ar: giving up on Rdy, try again

BUGS

The tape cannot reverse direction so the BSF and BSR ioctls are not supported.

The FSR ioctl is not supported.

The system will hang if the tape is removed while running.

When using the raw device, the number of bytes in any given transfer must be a multiple of 512 bytes. If it is not, the device driver returns an error.

The driver will only write an EOF mark on close if the last operation was a write, without regard for the mode used when opening the file. This delete empty files on a raw tape copy operation.