Did some further investigation on my original issue which involved my IDE
tape drive switching from /dev/ht0 to /dev/st0. It appears everything
revolves around the loading and unloading of modules. (Yes I'm a Linux
newbie) The modules which relate to an IDE tape drive are ide-tape
(/dev/ht0) and ide-scsi (/dev/st0). I have found that some
commands/programs will auto load these modules if they are not previously
loaded. So, the better implementation is to make a choice and load the
appropriate module to set the desired device type at boot so
commands/programs do not auto load their choice.
In trying to figure this out I found that a program installation had added
the line '/sbin/modprobe ide-scsi' to my /etc/rc.d/rc.local file which of
course enabled SCSI emulation and switched my tape drive from /dev/ht0 to
/dev/st0 at the next boot. This actually might have been a blessing in
disguise as I now find, using scsi emulation, that tape programs I had
evaluated and failed to recognize the drive at /dev/ht0 now recognize the
drive at /dev/st0 and appear to work fine. And if I am correct the ide-scsi
module is required for CDRW drives as well.
Two Questions:
1) Under e-smith is the '/etc/rc.d/rc.local' the correct location for
loading these modules?
2) The ide-scsi module seems to provide the best software compatibility.
Does anyone have any comments or experiences with long term usage of this
module either for ide tape or ide CDRW devices?
Regards,
Darrell
