Using a Sun tape drive under SunOS 4.1.1

[barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)]

   Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 11:46 CST
   From: dmitchell@trc.amoco.com (Donald H. Mitchell)

   Maybe Symbolics can fix this problem by using a different tape access
   mechanism?  

/etc/rmt is the Unix de facto standard remote tape access mechanism.
However, Symbolics could grab my and AAII's enhancements to the Unix RTAPE
server; the primary misfeature of this approach is that it requires the
Lispm administrator to deal with installing Unix software.  However,
Symbolics should be able to deal with this now that they've got experience
with the UX boards (in fact, they could probably bundle it in with the UX
life support).

   Since the error occurs when the Symbolics issues the rewind command, if we
   change the rewind to a null op and leave rewinding up to putting the tape in
   the drive, would that work?  Does the error occur with any of the other tape
   commands?  Does the Symbolics need to rewind the tape anytime but when it's
   first put in?

I have some patches to the dumper software that could make it skip the
rewind rewind (the Ultrix tape driver doesn't have a way of detecting
whether it's at BOT, so the RTAPE server reports that it isn't, and the
Lispm software was always querying me about whether to rewind -- I think I
just bypassed the question but it would probably be easy to make it bypass
the rewind as well).

There are some other times when you need to rewind.  For instance, if you
use the option to verify a dump tape automatically, it must rewind it.

Also, is it only rewind that has a problem, or also rewind+offline?  The
dumper offlines a tape when it's done with it.