The program stinit is meant for initializing of SCSI tape drive modes at system startup, when the tape driver module is loaded, or when new tape drivers are initialized using echo "scsi add-single-device" x y z v >/proc/scsi/scsi The parameters used in initialization of a tape drive are fetched from a text file. The parameter file is indexed by the inquiry data returned by the drive, i.e., the parameters are defined by the drive manufacturer, model, etc. This means that the initialization for a drive does not depend on its hardware address. A similar method is used by most Unices either within the kernel or outside the kernel. The contents of the configuration file and the command line parameters are defined in the man page stinit.8. A sample configuration file stinit.def.examples is included in this distribution. It can be used as example when writing descriptions for the tape drives in a system. NOTE that the examples by no means specify what are the "correct" parameters for different types of devices. The program is configured for maximum of 32 tapes and 4 modes (the default Linux configuration). If the kernel is configured for different number of tape modes, the definitions MAX_TAPES and NBR_MODES in stinit.c should be configured accordingly. (With 8 bit minor numbers NBR_MODES * MAX_TAPES == 128.) The files: stinit.c - the program source code stinit.8 - the man page stinit.def.examples - a file containing example definitions for imaginary tape drives Makefile - a sample makefile for the program README.stinit - this file Changes in version 0.7: - the directory scanning for tape devices is restricted to files with certain names in some directories to avoid triggering automatic module loading for device that don't exist (original patch from Philippe Troin) - support for devfs (/dev/tapes) added - logging bug fixes - add setting the cleaning request parameter - add setting the no-wait (immediate) bit Changes in version 0.6: - fix the bug with whitespace at the beginning of lines - use O_NONBLOCK to open the tape (anticipate kernel change) Initial version 0.5. November 8, 2001 Kai Mäkisara