<!doctype linuxdoc system>


<article>

<title> Taper FAQ
<author> Yusuf Nagree

<toc>

<sect>General 

<sect1>Why aren't you responding to my e-mail?
<p>
Like most people, I have to work to make a living. <em/Taper/ is done
totally voluntarily and thus earns me no $$$s. If I haven't responded
within a week, repost your message. If I still have not respond it means
that I can't get hold of you, or I'm too busy. Rest assured that I do
answer all e-mails eventually.

<sect1>Why is taper already up to version 6 when a lot of programs that have been around a lot longer are  only up to versions 2,3 etc..
<p>
The version scheme for taper is version x.y.z
<descrip>

<tag/x/  major version number. Generally, new version archives
	    will not be compatible with older versions. Thus,
	    archives created under version 2 will not be usable under
	    version 4, and version 4 archives are not compatible with
	    version 5. There was no public release of version 1 or 3.
	    Version 1 was a private development and version 3 was only
	    released to a few alpha testers and then ditched because
	    of problems
<tag/y/ minor version number. When new features are added, this 
	    number is increased. For example, the addition of new
	    options would necessitate a minor version number increase
<tag/z/ bug fix. If the new version contains minor changes
	    or bug fixes only, then only the bug fix number is increased.
	    If a new feature is added, then the minor version number is
	    increased.
</descrip>

Taper was originally developed for my own use with no thought to public
release. It was only after I saw many messages on USENET etc.. that I
realized other people may benefit from taper and that's when I went
public. Therefore, there has been no structured taper development
plan. New features are being added as users request them, and as
I try to respond as quickly as possible, taper versions have been
appearing quite regularly (in some cases, days apart). Even now, 
I am not formulating a plan, but adding features in (rough) order
 of frequency that they are being requested, and how easily it can
be implemented.

<sect1>Does taper support parallel port drives (eg. IOMEGA, SYQUEST, Backpack)?
<p>

Some parallel port drives are supported and full details on how
to compile & install it can be found at
<htmlurl url="http://www.torque.net/linux-pp.html" 
name="http://www.torque.net/linux-pp.html">.

Thanks to Jeff Blaine for this information

Note that the drive cannot do a fast fsf nor can it do a seek. Make sure
the appropriate preferences are set correctly.


<sect1>Does taper support the xxxxx drive?
<p>
Taper is user level program and not a low level I/O device driver. That
means, it expects there to be a program that communicates between Linux
and the tape drive. Examples are <em/ftape/ and <em/zftape/ for tape
drives that connect to the floppy drive. SCSI tapes and IDE tapes are
other examples of tape drives. With SCSI tape drives, chances are that
support is available in the kernel. Similarly, IDE support is built
into the kernel.

For other tape drives, you will have to find out if there is a device
driver available. Try the newsgroups for information. Alternatively,
now that Linux is mainstream, your tape drive manufacturer may have
released a driver or know of the whereabouts.

<sect1>Does taper support tape drives greater than 2 gigabytes?
<p>
Taper will support tape drives up to 4GB in size. This is because
Linux is a 32 bit system and the size of an integer is 32 bits - 
ie. 4GB. It is planned to increase this to 64 bits, however, doing
so will render the new archives incompatible with the old 32 bit
archives. Before making archive incompatibilities, I want to have
a lot of changes I can make at once, to minimize the number
of archive changes. As time is limited at the moment, it may be
a while before this stage is reached.


<sect> User interface
<p>
<sect1>How do I de-select a file in backup?
<p>
Use the TAB keys to go to the selected files box, move the cursor (using the
arrow keys) to the item you wish to de-select and then press 'u' or 'U' and
after confirmation, the file will be de-selected. Alternatively, you can
press 'u' or 'U' on the file in the selected files box or the directory box.


<sect1>How do I de-select a file in restore?
<p>
The same as above.


<sect1>How do I move between YES and NO in message boxes?
<p>
You can press 'y', 'Y', 'n', 'N' to select yes or no directly. Alternatively, 
use TAB or spacebar to move the highlight between YES and NO. Press ENTER when
the highlight is on what you wish.

<sect1>How do I exclude a subdirectory or file?
<p>
To facilitate incremental backups on an ever changing UN*X directory tree,
when you select a directory for backup, taper only stores the directory
name, not its contents of subdirectories. This means that it is not possible
to select a directory (eg. /usr) and then enter the directory and 
then unselect a subdirectory (eg. /usr/tmp). If you try and do this, taper
will give you an error message.

From version 6.8, <em/taper/ provides two mechanisms for excluding a single
file or subdirectory.

<itemize>
<item>Under the preference menu, there are two preferences : exclude_directories 
exclude_files. Add the file or subdirectory you want to exclude in these 
preferences
<item>Use the 'e' option in the backup window, which will put the file 
or subdirectory in the exclude window
</itemize>

<sect1>Why does the display in verify/backup/full restore appear jerky and misses files?
<p>
To make taper run faster, the display is updated every second. Since taper can
transfer small files to/from the tape device quicker than this, taper doesn't
display them. There is a substantial improvement in backup performance using this
technique.

<sect1>I'm unable to type anything into dialog boxes?
<p>
This is usually caused by an incorrect ncurses setup. Try to get the
latest version of ncurses, do a full compile and install. See
my home page <htmlurl url="http://www.e-survey.net.au/taper/" 
name="www.e-survey.net.au/taper/"> for a precompiled package.


<sect>Compiling
<p>
<sect1>Where do I get the latest ncurses?
<p>
It is available from <htmlurl
url="ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses/"
name="ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses/">.
You will need at least ncurses 4.1 to compile taper. 
Earlier versions will NOT work. Later version will.

It is also available from sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux/libs. Please
do not use sunsite if you have a close by mirror since it is very
heavily loaded.

Taper also requires the forms library (which comes with ncurses). Compile 
ncurses and then do:

<tscreen><verb>
        rm /usr/include/form.h
	rm /usr/lib/libform.a
	rm /usr/lib/libform_g.a
	cp ncurses-xx/form.h /usr/include
   	cp ncurses-xx/lib/libform.a /usr/lib
	cp ncurses-xx/lib/libform_g.a /usr/lib
</verb></tscreen>

See my home page <htmlurl url="http://www.e-survey.net.au/taper/" 
name="www.e-survey.net.au/taper/"> for a precompiled package.

<sect1>I compile and get many errors saying <tt/ANSI does not support long long/.
<p>
Don't worry about that. This means that you are using early kernels in
which the header files were not strictly ANSI compliant. This shouldn't
affect taper.

<sect1>Why do I get a gcc fatal signal 11 message when compiling taper
<p>
I have taken this straight from the GCC-FAQ:
<p>
<verb>
30) What does the message "Internal compiler error: cc1 got fatal signal 11,4" mean ?

Ans:	Gcc is probably the biggest memory hog you likely to run on your
	machine and it will surely eat up a lot of your RAM. Usually a fatal
	signal 11 will mean some sort of parity errors in your RAM or other
	hardware faults. I had this once when `cc1' got corrupted due to a
	race condition and bad blocks on my hard disk. There have also been
	reports that overheating chips, (not french fries), can also produce
	such errors. And watch for poor IDE controller/drive combos that
	are being run faster than the standard 8MHz AT bus clock. These
	can give the same errors by causing corruption of the swap space.

	Usually, a signal 11 (segmentation violation) means that a process
	tried to access memory out of its process space, or tried to write
	into a read-only location.  Sometimes, this signal is caused by
	software bugs, not by hardware faults (or your system would hang
	repeatedly, because the same thing happened to the kernel).  With
	gcc 2.3.3, some people could reproduce a lot of "signal 11"'s.

	A "fatal signal 4" has been reported to be generated due to lack of
	memory (happened on a 4MB system).

	Also it can mean a failure in one of the `ld' or `as' stages. Try
	recompiling whatever with a -v flag to gcc and see if it is failing
	in one of the cc1, cpp, as or ld stages possibly.
</verb>

I will also add that sometimes it is due to the fact that gcc can't find
the libraries. Make sure your libraries are in a location accessible to
gcc (and that they are readable), and if not, change the LINK_LIB path
in the Makefile.


<sect1>When compiling, the compiler complains that it cannot find <tt/curses.h/.
<p>
   

Make sure that your curses.h file is in /usr/include. Some older versions
of ncurses places it in a directory called /usr/include/ncurses. If this is
the case, you have two options:

Move all the files in /usr/include/ncurses to /usr/include

OR

Change the line 

<tscreen><verb>
INCLUDE=
</verb></tscreen>

your Makefile.common to

<tscreen><verb>
INCLUDE = -I/usr/include/ncurses
</verb></tscreen>


<sect1>I get error messages wattron and wattroff not found when compiling.
<p>

You do not have the correct curses.h header file. Make sure that you 
have the latest curses.h file and there are no old ones lying around.

<sect1>I am getting errors such as <tt/syntax error before `int'/ while compiling.	 

<p>	 
You are using an old linux kernel. To overcome this, in the Makefile.common
file, there is a line 

<tscreen><verb>
   CFLAGS_NOLNK = -ansi
</verb></tscreen>
   
Change this line to

<tscreen><verb>
   CFLAGS_NOLNK =
</verb></tscreen>
   

<sect1>Why do I get an error about not being able to find <tt/form.h/ when compiling?
<p>
You need the forms package that comes with ncurses. See above for how
to get the latest ncurses package. 

Note that you need the ncurses sources - getting the binaries alone often 
does not contain the form.h file that you require.

<sect1>I get an error : <tt>compress/gzip.h: conflicting types for 'basename'</tt> when compiling taper
<p>
This means that you are using C libraries that are too old. Ideally,
upgrade your C libraries. Alternatively, you have to edit the file
gzip.h found in the compress subdirectory of taper.

Find the line:

<tscreen><verb>
	extern char *basename 	OF((char *fname));
</verb></tscreen>

and change it so it reads:

<tscreen><verb>
	/* extern char *basename OF((char *fname)); */
</verb></tscreen>

and try compiling taper again. 


<sect1>I get the following errors whilst compiling: <tt/select_box.h:125: parse error before `umode_t'/.
<p>
You are using glibc2 (or libc6) libraries. In <em/Makefile.common/, 
make sure there is a line:

<tscreen><verb>
GLIBC = TRUE
</verb></tscreen>



<sect>Problems in backup and restore
<p>
<sect1>I keep on getting the error message <tt/Device or resource busy while trying to open backup device/.
<p>

<itemize>
<item>Make sure that another user is not using the tape drive.
<item>Make sure that no processes that use the tape drive are running in the
  background.
<item>If you are using a floppy controller, make sure that there are no floppy
  drives mounted.
<item>This error may also be caused by insufficient unfragmented memory below
16MB on PC Linux systems. In this case, the ftape module could not
allocate a DMA buffer. This also affects the floppy module.
</itemize>
 

<sect1>I get a <tt/No such device/  error when trying to backup or restore.
<p>
You have not enabled support for your tape drive. If you have a SCSI
tape drive, make sure your kernel was compiled with support for
CSI devices, support for SCSI tape drives, and support for your interface
card, enabled. Also make sure that you have edited the Makefile and removed
the '#' in the line '#DEFINES=-DHAVE_SCSI' and then re-compile and re-install.

Also, if you have a SCSI drive, make sure that it is turned on
when you boot Linux. If it isn't turned on when you boot, Linux
won't register its presence, and even if you turn it on after,
it may still not work.

If you have a floppy tape drive, make sure you have ftape, and you
have installed it with "insmod ftape.o". 


<sect1>Why does taper say <tt/Rewinding tape/ for a flash and then before it starts to read, takes a long time to start actually read.
<p>   
This is the way the ftape/zftape driver works. When taper (or anyone) does
a request for the tape to be rewound or fast forwarded, it doesn't actually
move the tape at that point - it just remembers that the tape needs to
be rewound/fast forwarded. When a read/write command is given, then the
tape is actually moved. So, when taper issues a rewind, the driver 
instantly returns to taper, but then when taper issues a read, then
the tape is positioned - hence it looks like it is taking a long time
to read. This is why "Rewinding tape" only stays for a second, but 
before the read can begin, the tape has to be physically moved.


<sect1>Why does taper say <tt/Tape drive type has not been set/ when started
<p>
You must tell taper what type of tape drive you have. There are several
types taper supports. You start taper like


<tscreen><verb>
   taper -T SCSI    (taper -T s) or   
   taper -T ftape   (taper -T f) or 
   taper -T zftape  (taper -T z) or
   taper -T removable  (taper -T r) or
   taper -T file (taper -T l) or
   taper -T ide  (taper -T i)
</verb></tscreen>
   
depending on what type of tape drive you have. You can then save
this to a preference file using the menu option so you don't have to
start taper like this again. Note that you can use the shortened
version shown in brackets.

Alternatively, you can set the environment variable, TAPE_TYPE to 
scsi, zftape, removable, ide, file or ftape. 



<sect>Problems backing up
<p>
<sect1>Whenever I try to select a file or directory for backup, I get the error message <em/tt File is on exclusion list//.
<p>
You have extraneous spaces in your exclude directory and/or exclude files preferences.
There must be no leading or trailing spaces in the preferences. Additionally, each
file/directory (if any) entry must be separated by one space only.

<sect1>I am mid-way through backing up in the directory /proc and I get funny messages such as <tt/-7% done/ and the program seems to hang?
<p>
The /proc directory does not contain files. It contains run-time system 
information, such as the environment of running processes, an image of
system memory etc.. Therefore, you should not need to backup the /proc 
directory. If you do, you will get spurious results such as the above.
See <em/TAPER.TXT/ for how to automatically exclude the /proc system.


<sect1>When doing backups that take more than one tape, when it reaches the end of the tape, taper segmentation faults.
<p>

Taper can't correctly work out the end of tape on some tape drives. If the
above occurs with you, your tape drive is one of those. Go to the preference
menu, and under tape drive preferences, tell taper the size of your tape 
drive. Note that taper needs the UNCOMPRESSED size of the tape drive. Subtract
about 10% from the manufacturers stated to account for formatting
etc.. (eg. if your tape drive is 120MB, tell taper it is 108MB). 



<sect1>After doing a backup or mkinfo, taper exists saying <tt/Unable to create info file/.
<p>
Check that taper is able to create the info file directory (the default is
 /$HOME/.taper_info). If it can't, taper generates this error. Reasons include
no disk space, and you don't have permission to. Note that after this error, 
the backup is still intact. You just have to fix the problem and then select
mkinfo, not do the whole backup again.


<sect1>Taper works fine in interactive mode, but when I run it from a cron job, I get a <tt/Can't start backup child/ error mailed to me.
<p>

As explained above, taper uses two ancillary program. Note that cron uses
a different path than the normal one. Generally, it is only /bin, /usr/bin
and /usr/local/bin.

Either copy bg_backup and bg_restore to one of those directories, or
make links in these directories or change the path.

<sect1>Taper says <tt/Can't start backup child/.
<p>

Taper uses two ancillary programs, bg_backup and bg_restore to handle background
compression. Make sure that you have these two programs, and that they are
in the directory you started taper in or in a directory on your path.

<sect1>Taper says <tt/Can't start backup child/ when running under a cron job.
<p>
For some installations, cron does not have /sbin and /usr/sbin in its search path. 
I don't know why. The solution is to put bg_backup, bg_restore and taper in /usr/bin or /usr/sbin.


<sect1>I notice that zftape has a compressed mode. Should I use taper compression or zftape compression
<p>
If you use zftape compression, you may find your backups will be quicker, 
and they certainly will be easier on system load. However, should a segment
of tape become corrupted, then it will be virtually impossible to 
reconstruct your backup and retrieve any files beyond the corrupted segment.

If you use taper's compression, however, it may be possible to retrieve
data beyond the corrupted section, depending on exactly which pieces of
data were corrupted. This is because taper compresses each file
individually and hence, the corruption won't affect other files.



<sect1>Why does taper seg fault at the end of a backup or while updating the header files.
<p>    
There seems to be a bug in either libc 5.3.12 and/or binutils 2.6.0.12.
To find out what version of libc you are using, do a

<tscreen><verb>
   ls -l /lib/libc.so.5
</verb></tscreen>

and you will see what version of libc you are using.

To find out what version of binutils you are using, do a

<tscreen><verb>
   ld -v
</verb></tscreen>

which will print your version.

If you are using one or both of the above, then you can do one of the
following:
<itemize>
<item>Downgrade your C libraries to 5.2.18
<item>Upgrade your binutils to 2.6.0.14
</itemize>

Option 2 is the easier (and more logical choice), however, it may not
work all the time. Option 1 should always work.


<sect1>Why is taper not compressing my files even though I have compression turned on?
<p>
The most common cause is that taper cannot find bg_backup which is the 
program that compresses programs in the background. Make sure that you
have this program compiled and either in the current directory or on 
your path.

<sect1>I am using <em/ftape/ version &ge 3 and getting some spurious results.
<p>
<em/ftape/ version &ge 3 is actually a combination of the old <em/ftape/ and
<em/zftape/. Therefore, if you are using <em/ftape/ version &ge 3, you
should start <em/taper/ with the <em/zftape/ option (ie. taper -T z).


<sect1>I am running from a cron job and keep on getting mailed errors about not being able to start a backup child. It works fine from the command line.
<p>
For some reason, when cron runs a job, it doesn't put /sbin on the path, and
therefore, <em/taper/ can't find its children which are in /sbin. The solution
is to move <em/taper/, <em/bg_backup/ and <em/bg_restore/ to /bin or put 
links in /bin to point to the entries in /sbin. Newer versions of <em/taper/ will
automatically do this with make install.

<sect1>I keep on getting an "alarm clock" error.
<p>
There is an incompatibility with taper and some dyanmic C libraries. 
Compile taper statically, rather than dynamically.

<sect1>Every now an then, <em/taper/ just stops whilst backing up and requires a keypress to continue.
<p>
Upgrade to ncurses 4.1 or greater.

<sect1>Taper doesn't backup correctly and the log file has lots of "W:Write Child Segmentation Fault" messages.
<p>
There is a problem with some C libraries, eg. version 5.4.38, and 5.4.44. Try upgrading to libc6 or
downgrading to an old libc5 library (5.4.33 works).

<sect>Problems restoring
<p>
<sect1>After doing a restore, the permissions on the files are correct, but all the files are owned by the user running restore (ie. ownership of files and directories is not correctly set).
<p>
This will happen if a user other than root runs the restore program. Under
UN*X, only the root can change the ownership of files. Therefore, if wish
to restore the correct ownerships, run restore as root. If you set the
--set-ownership preference off, then <em/taper/ will not attempt to set 
the ownership of files after a restore.


<sect1>Restore give me a lot of warnings about unable to set times, and permissions.
<p>    
See above


<sect1>I backed up using taper-5.1.3 or earlier and when I try and restore, not all my files are being printed on the restore screen, or funny filenames appear in my restore screen.
<p>
There was an obscure bug in taper-5.0 to taper-5.1.3 which caused incorrect
file counts to be occassionally written to the archive. Unfortunately,
other than recreating the backup, this can't be rectified. However,
if you run mkinfo on your archive, taper will create a 'fudged' info
file that will allow you to use your archive normally.



<sect1>Why does restore print <tt/Can't give warning & error count/.
<p>
If you do not enable triple buffering, taper assumes that you haven't
got SYSV_IPC support for shared memory aspects of SYSV_IPC. Taper restores
in a child process in the background, independently of the main taper
program and requires shared memory for the child to communicate with
the main program. If you don't have shared memory, then the child
can't communicate with the parent, and let the parent know
how many errors the child encoutnered, hence the error message and warning
message count will be incorrect.


<sect1>How do I restore my files in the directory from which they were originally backed up?
<p>
By default, taper will restore files into the current directory (the
same as tar). Subdirectories will be created as necessary. For example,
if you back up the /etc directory and then run taper from /home/joe and
try and restore this archive, a directory called /home/joe/etc will
be made and all files will be in this directory. 

To restore files from whence they came, start taper with the -r option 
like:

<tscreen><verb>
	taper -r / [rest of your options]
</verb></tscreen>

Alternatively, you can use the restore preferences menu. Simply set the
restore path preference to /


<sect1>I make a backup and all seems well, but then when I try to restore or verify, taper says `This is not a taper archive' or taper says `This is tape 0. Insert tape 1'
<p>
   
The most likely explanation is that you have not set up your rewinding &
non-rewinding devices correctly.  Look at the table below and check that
your preference file has the correct devices set under tape drive preferences.

<verb>
                  rewinding               non-rewinding
    ====================================================
    ftape         /dev/ftape              /dev/nftape
    zftape        /dev/qft0               /dev/nqft0
    scsi          /dev/st0                /dev/nst0
    floppy a      /dev/fd0                /dev/fd0
    floppy b      /dev/fd1                /dev/fd1
</verb>
    
These device names may be different if you have configured your system
differently. 

See the section in the docs about tape devices for further information.


<sect1>I make a backup OK but when I try and restore, taper gives errors in the log file such as `Creating device xxxx' when xxx should be a file.
<p>
   
You have set your preference `can seek' (under tape drive preferences) to TRUE
when your tape drive cannot seek properly. Run the utility `test can seek'. 
If this utility says that your tape drive cannot seek, change the preference
via a command line option, preference file or manually. 

If the utility says your tape drive can seek, but you are getting these sorts
of errors, please contact me with details.


<sect>Problems verifying/restoring info files
<p>

<sect1>Why is <em/taper/ sluggish when selecting files to restore?
<p>
When doing a restore, <em/taper/ automatically tries to find the
most recent file in the archive - ie. you may have several copies
of /home/misc/test in different volumes. <em/Taper/ will find 
the most recent and select that one for restore. This does take time.

If you do not want this feature, disable it from the preferences menu
and <em/taper/ won't be so sluggish.

<sect1>Why does <em/taper/ try to advance to a non-existent volume and then print an error message?
<p>
When doing a verify or restore info files, <em/taper/ doesn't know how many volumes
are on the archive (since that information is in the info files). Thus, the
only way <em/taper/ knows that the end of the archive has been reached is when
error messages are returned. Some tape drives return error messages gracefully,
and hence <em/taper/ exits gracefully. Others do not, and thus <em/taper/ prints
error messages.

Do not worry about the error messages - you verify/restore etc.. will have
worked correctly.

<sect1>If I'm verifying and I run out of temporary disk space, then <em/taper/ says some of my files aren't the same as on the disk when I know they are
<p>
If <em/taper/ runs out of disk space while verifying (or restoring), it may not be 
able to read in the whole file from the tape and thus thinks that the file on the 
disk and tape are different.

If you run out of temporary disk space, ignore all errors and redo the verify.

<sect1>I made a backup under <em/ftape/ version &ge 3 and am trying to restore under <em/zftape/ and it won't restore my files.
<p>
You cannot restore backups made with <em/ftape/ version &ge 3 with the
older <em/zftape/. <em/zftape/ backups must be restored with <em/zftape/ and
<em/ftape/ &ge 3 must be restored with <em/ftape/ &ge 3.

<sect>Specific tape drives
<p>

<sect1>The Seagate TR4 SCSI drive
<p>
You must prepare a tape as follows before use with <em/taper/:

<tscreen><verb>
mt-st -f /dev/st0 setblk 32768
dd if=/dev/zero ibs=32k of=/dev/st0 obs=32k
</verb></tscreen>

In <em/taper/, set the set block size preference ON and set the blocksize
to 32768. You can use other block sizes other than 32K - make sure you
change the appropriate values.

Set the preference "use eom" ON.

<sect1>Some SCSI drives
<p>
Some SCSI drives require the scsi2logical parameter set. There are two
ways of doing this.
<itemize>
<item>Change the following line in your <em/st.c/ file in the SCSI driver:
<tscreen><verb>
tpnt->scsi2_logical = 0;

to

tpnt->scsi2_logical = 1;
</verb></tscreen>
<item>Use the following command before starting <em/taper/:
<tscreen><verb>
mt -f /dev/st0 scsi2logical
</verb></tscreen>
</itemize>


<sect1>Adaptec aicxxx
<p>
From Ringo.DeSmet@advalvas.be:

When I started backing up, I had quite some problems, but these were
related to the adaptec aic7xxx low-level scsi driver. I am now running
kernel 2.0.30 with aic7xxx driver version 2.1.26 (Jun 1). If other
people with similar config asks you, I have the following options
enabled in the source code of the driver (aic7xxx.c):

7^<tscreen><verb>
#define TAGGED_QUEUEING_BY_DEVICE
</verb></tscreen>

and a few lines beneath it, you can set the SCB queue depth for each
device. People must check with the scsiconfig utility which devices
support Tagged Queueing. There are 16 values that can be filled in: scsi
id 0 to 15. The adapter supports it, as well as my first harddisk. All
other devices have tagged queueing disabled. The line in the driver for
me looks as follows:

<tscreen><verb>
{ 4, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 8, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1}
</verb></tscreen>

which means that I tell the scsi driver that my HD (/dev/sda) can accept
4 SCBs and my adapter can accept 8. "-1" means disabled...


<sect>Miscellaneous
<p>

<sect1>I am getting errors such as  <tt/st0: Error with sense data: extra data not valid Current error st09:00/ and <tt/sense key Medium Error/ and <tt/Additional sense indicates Id crc or ecc error/.

This indicates that your tape drive requires the scsi2logical paramater set. See above.

<sect1>I am getting lots of temporary files in the /tmp directory and taper is dying with <tt/FIFO errors/ in the log file.
<p>
If you are using libc5, try upgrading to glibc. If that is not possible, uncomment
the "-DFIFO_PROBLEMS" define in <tt/Makefile.common/.


<sect1>I am using a SCSI drive and <em/taper/ says my drive cannot seek, when I know it can.
<p>
Some SCSI drives require the block size set. If you are having the above
problem, try setting the set blocksize preference ON.

<sect1>In version 6.5, taper is not using preferences in my preference file
<p>    
From 6.5, the names of the preference file, log files and info directories
have been changed. Rename the following files/directories:

<verb>
     .taper_log   ---> taper_log
     .taper_prefs ---> taper_prefs
     .taper_info  ---> taper_info
</verb>

     
<sect1>In version 6.5, taper can't find my info files
<p>
See above

    
<sect1>How do I compress my info files which are currently uncompressed?
<p>
Just recreate the info files from the main menu


<sect1>Why does looking for recursive links result in a seg fault?
<p>
The recursive link utility goes through your filesystem looking for links that
are recursive (ie. end up pointing to themselves so that there is an
infinite loop). This utility tries to find such recursive links. It finds
them in one of two ways :

<itemize>
<item>It finds & tells you about the offending link
<item>It seg faults at the offending link
</itemize>
  
This way you can find & correct the offending link. 
Note recursive links are only a problem if you are backing up with 
hard links set to ON (ie. the file and not the link is backed up).

<sect1>Why are the info files so big?
<p>
The new info file format from 6.8 is a sparse m-tree index. This
is a very fast index file. However, because file names are 256 bytes
under Linux, each file takes approximately 300 bytes of information
and thus, the info files can grow quite big.

However, they do compress very well, so make sure that the compress info
preference is ON. Also, if disk space is a problem, you can delete the
files ending in `.1' and `.2' and reindex the files (from the
utilities menu) when required.

<sect1>My backup sets are no longer being recognized.
<p>
From 6.8.0a11, the format of the backup sets changed to accommodate the
exclude option. To convert your old backup sets, simply insert line with
the letter 'I' before each filename. For example, if your backup set looked like:

<tscreen><verb>
/home/yusuf/dir1

/usr/docs

/usr/local
</verb></tscreen>

the new backup set should look like:

<tscreen><verb>
I
/home/yusuf/dir1

I
/usr/docs

I
/usr/local
</verb></tscreen>

</article>