The original problem centred around getting osf (3.2g)
to recognise fujitsu 2513A (DynaMO 640) magoptic disks.
While SCU can correctly identify the drive properties, and
newfs is capable of detecting the correct geometry info,
it is not possible to make a filesystem on these disks
because of the 2048 bytes/sector media size (for several
technical reasons not really important to the solution of
the problem).
It seems that this feature will not make it into DU4 until
"V4.0D (around the end of this calendar year, if not early
next year)." - Tom Blinn <tpb_at_zk3.dec.com>
So solutions for this drive are:
1. Use as a raw device (not very convenient)
2. Use only 512 byte/sector media. ie 230/540 MB disks.
This works fine, (I haven't tested 540 disks since they
are not available in Australia yet, but 230's work fine)
But since the drive is capable of using larger media it
would be nice to get it working (esp for backing up large
projects outside the normal system backup scheme)
3. Use a network layer to hide the drive properties from osf.
option 3 is actually the best bet for us since our lab is
mainly PCs running NT/95/linux (all of which support the
640 media).
NT/95: use samba. Only problem is that file permisions are
messed up. OK for single user work, but since smbfs is only
available for linux, the samba interface to the MO drive is
not very nice.
Linux: use NFS. This is by far the best solution. ext2fs
on the MO disks, mount them, and they can be used with only
the normal restrictions that NFS has.
Thanks for all of the suggestions regarding deriving the
drive's geometry.
David Pinson
dpinson_at_t-rex.materials.unsw.edu.au
School of Materials Science and Engineering
University of New South Wales, Australia
Received on Wed Jul 02 1997 - 09:58:02 NZST