On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Kenneth E. Lussier wrote:
> I believe that The question was can you share the DAT FROM a Windoze PC
> TO a Linux PC via SMB (at least that was how I was reading it). If the
> DAT can be read by the Windoze system and shared out using the windoze
> mechanisms (SMB protocol of print&file sharing), then wouldn't the
> smbclient on the Linux box be reading it as simply an SMB/Windoze mount
> point rather than as the actual fs that the DAT uses?
No.
When MS-Windows does device sharing of tape drives, it is using a different
protocol then the "Windows file sharing" part of SMB. Samba does not
implement that protocol at all, AFAIK.
Sequential access devices (tapes) are generally not presented by the OS in
the same way as random access devices (disks). The conventional "files and
folders" abstraction used by Unix, MS-DOS, MS-Windows, Macintosh, VMS, and
most other systems really requires a random access device. A tape, on the
other hand, usually behaves more like a single file (and a slow one, at that).
MS-Windows does not mount a tape drive into the filesystem, any more then
Unix does. When accessing tape drives, the usual file formats (FAT, ext2,
etc.) are completely abandoned in favor of other formats (tar, cpio, etc.)
more suited to the sequential access media.
In short: Tapes are not disks, and are not treated the same.
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| "Come not between the Dragon and his wrath." |
| - William Shakespeare, _King_Lear_, I.i.124 |
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