From c743e44fbb1f8668941e83de07662b1ecd33d083 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Lee Duncan Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 12:41:01 -0800 Subject: [SCSI] st: expand ability to write immediate filemarks The st tape driver recently added the MTWEOFI ioctl, which writes a tape filemark (EOF), like the MTWEOF ioctl, except that MTWEOFI returns immediately. This makes certain applications, like backup software, run much more quickly on buffered tape drives. Since legacy applications do not know about this new MTWEOFI ioctl, this patch adds a new ioctl option that tells the st driver to return immediately when writing an EOF (i.e. a filemark). This new flag is much like the existing flag that tells the st driver to perform writes (and certain other IOs) immediately, but this new flag only applies to writing EOFs. This new feature is controlled via the MTSETDRVBUFFER ioctl, using the newly-defined MT_ST_NOWAIT_EOF flag. Use of this new feature is displayed via the sysfs tape "options" attribute. The st documentation was updated to mention this new flag, as well as the problems that can occur from using it. Signed-off-by: Lee Duncan Acked-by: Kai Makisara Signed-off-by: James Bottomley --- Documentation/scsi/st.txt | 4 ++++ 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+) (limited to 'Documentation') diff --git a/Documentation/scsi/st.txt b/Documentation/scsi/st.txt index 691ca29..685bf35 100644 --- a/Documentation/scsi/st.txt +++ b/Documentation/scsi/st.txt @@ -390,6 +390,10 @@ MTSETDRVBUFFER MT_ST_SYSV sets the SYSV semantics (mode) MT_ST_NOWAIT enables immediate mode (i.e., don't wait for the command to finish) for some commands (e.g., rewind) + MT_ST_NOWAIT_EOF enables immediate filemark mode (i.e. when + writing a filemark, don't wait for it to complete). Please + see the BASICS note about MTWEOFI with respect to the + possible dangers of writing immediate filemarks. MT_ST_SILI enables setting the SILI bit in SCSI commands when reading in variable block mode to enhance performance when reading blocks shorter than the byte count; set this only -- cgit v1.1