3. The preliminaries

Note that I (the howto-maintainer) no longer use ftape myself, so I cannot give much up-to-date advice on what hardware to buy. If you have a problem, try posting on comp.os.linux.help, or to the tape discussion list on vger.rutger.edu (see Following the ftape development below). You should try to post a summary of your problems and its solution(s), after you've got it working, even if you only got it partially working. Please also send me (<khp@pip.dknet.dk>) a copy of your solution so that I can add it to the HOWTO.

I read my mail daily, I try to respond to everyone, but I cannot guarantee that I will respond immediately. Also, I seldomly read the newsgroups (comp.os.linux.help et al), as my Internet access is through a modem line and I have to read news On-line 8-(.

If you recieve this as part of a printed distribution or on a CD-ROM, please check out the Linux Documentation home page or ftp to ftp://sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/doc/HOWTO to see if there exists a more recent version. This could potentially save you a lot of trouble.

3.1 What is ftape

ftape is a driver program that controls various low-cost tape drives that connect to the floppy controller.

ftape is not a backup program as such; it is a device driver, which allows you to use the tape drive (just like the SoundBlaster 16 driver let you use your sound card) through the device files /dev/[n]rft[0-3].

ftape is written by Bas Laarhoven <bas@vimec.nl>, with ``a little help from his friends'' to sort out the ECC (Error Correcting Code) stuff. ftape is copyrighted by Bas under the GNU General Public License, which basically says: ``go ahead and share this with the world, just don't disallow other people from copying it further''.

ftape is quite stable, and has been that for some time now. Most changes is to support the new QIC-3010 and QIC-3020 (aka Tranvan) tape formats and new tape drives. It is reliable enough for critical backups (but always remember to check your backups, so you won't get a nasty surprise some day).

ftape supports drives that conform to the QIC-117 and one of the QIC-80, QIC-40, QIC-3010, and QIC-3020 standards.

ftape support neither QIC-02, IDE (ATAPI), nor SCSI tape drives. SCSI drives are accessed as /dev/[n]st[0-7] and are supported by the kernel through the SCSI drivers. If you look for help on SCSI tape drives, you should read the SCSI-howto. ATAPI tape drives are supported by the kernel since 1.3.46. See section Supported drives and Un-supported drives for a list of supported and unsupported drives.