Neither the author nor the distributors, or any other contributor of this HOWTO are in any way responsible for physical, financial, moral or any other type of damage incurred by following the suggestions in this text.
The "Optical Disk-HOWTO" and "LF1000 mini-HOWTO" are copyrighted.
(C) 1996,1997 by Skip Rye, abr@brspc_0064.msd.ray.com
(C) 1997,1998,2000,2003 by Skip Rye, abr@preferred.com
Linux HOWTO documents may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, as long as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged. The author, however, would like to be notified of any such distributions. All translations, derivative works, or aggregate works incorporating any Linux HOWTO documents must be covered under this copyright notice. In other words, you may not produce a derivative work from a HOWTO and impose additional restrictions on its distribution. Exceptions to these rules may be granted under certain conditions. In short we wish to promote dissemination of this information through as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright on the HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to redistribute the HOWTOs. Should you have any questions, please contact Greg Hankins, the Linux HOWTO coordinator, at gregh@sunsite.unc.edu. You may finger his address for phone number and additional contact information.
Daniel Kobras <kobras@linux.de>
Magneto optical drives use a "far field" magnetic field and a laser to change polarization of a magnetic media. At temperatures below 180-200°C (350-390°F) magnetic polarization is "frozen" into the media. However when heated above this so-called Curie-temperature a static external magnetic field can change the polarization. When the media cools down below its Curie-temperature, the information is frozen again. A high power write laser is used to heat the disk surface to the appropriate temperature at which time the "Far field" can set the polarization on the disk magnetic surface.
Read back is based on the so-called Kerr effect, i. e. depending on the direction of the magnetic field on the disk's surface, the plane of polarization of the incoming laser beam is slightly rotated and the information can be restored.
The use of a laser for polarization change allows for bit and track densities much higher than on conventional "flying" magnetic heads. The "far field" means no more "head crashes" - that is assuming your disk label doesn't peal off during the load or you don't leave one of those sticky pads on the disk cartridge. Nowadays the most commonly used 3.5" media have a capacity of 640MB[*] per platter but there are still media with 540MB, 230MB and 128MB. On some models both sides of the media are used yielding up to a capacity of 1.3GB - you must remove the media and flip it over to use the other 640MB though. There are 5.25" media with up to a total of 2.6GB, but these have to be flipped as well.
The major drawback with ordinary magneto optical media was their need for an extra erase cycle considerably slowing down write speed. That's where LIMDOW media come in. LIMDOW (Light Intensity Modulated Direct OverWrite) disks use a more sophisticated set of five different magnetic layers. Thus the erase cycle can be omitted yielding a 33% speed up, as only one write and one verify cycle have to be performed. Read back is identical to ordinary disks. Please check with your drives manual if you want to use LIMDOW media. I only have experience with Fujitsu's M2513 which works well with LIMDOW. As far as other drives are concerned I simply don't know.
Manufacturers claim the life time of magneto optical media to be 30 years and up. Disks can be rewritten at least 10 million times (1 million for LIMDOW media). Reading is claimed safe for at least 100 million times.
[*] There's a sort of religious discussion going on whether 1MB should be understood as 1x1.000x1.000 bytes or rather 1x1.024x1.024 bytes. Here we use 1MB==1.000.000 bytes, the definition preferred by vendors for obvious reasons. Don't worry if Linux reports your media to be smaller - it's just a matter of definition.
First of all, make sure your MO drive is sanely jumpered, i.e. make sure its SCSI id is unique on your system, Parity checking and SCAM mode settings resemble those of your other SCSI devices as well as your controller and do _not_ enable any weird looking options such as "Mac Mode" or the like. Your drive might be equipped with an internal write cache, but since Linux already does pretty good caching on its own, don't expect too much of a performance gain, if any. Also keep in mind that each additional level of caching is a source of possible data loss or corruption in case of failing hardware. Consequently the recommended paranoia setting is to turn off the write cache.
As long as you're not using 640MB disks, setting up the MO drive is rather straightforward. Assuming your drive is properly installed, at boot/insmod time, your SCSI-Controller should notify you of the newly added drive and configure another SCSI device like /dev/sda, /dev/sdb... (Keep in mind that the SCSI bus is scanned with increasing SCSI id, so if your SCSI hard disk for example is ID 4 and used to be /dev/sda and your MO drive has ID 3, the MO will now be /dev/sda whilst the HD is /dev/sdb.) Working with your MO is no different from working with an ordinary hard disk. You can partition it (more information on this topic is given below), create file systems, mount it as usual. Note that as long as the disk is mounted the drive is locked and you won't be able to change the disk.
Be careful when trying to get 640MB disks to work. These use a hard-sector size of 2048 bytes, 2.0.xx kernels will support only 512 and 1024 bytes per sector. However 2048 byte support has been added to 2.1.32 and up. If you for some reason have to stick to 2.0.xx, there are several patches floating around, for example at
* http://liniere.gen.u-tokyo.ac.jp/2048.html, * http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/ orschaer/mo/ * http://elektra.e-technik.uni-ulm.de/ mbuck/linux/patches.html
Be sure to use a either a patched version of fdisk available at some of the sites above or a recent enough version from the official util- linux package supporting the -b option. (Invoke with fdisk -b 2048 /dev/sdXX when partitioning 2048 byte media.)
There are two alternatives of how to access your disks: the ordinary method of creating one or more partitions or just accessing the raw drive, which in Win/DOS environments is also known as the superfloppy format.
The first method will require non-640MB disks or a 2048-byte-aware fdisk, the latter is suitable for any kind of disk, however these disks cannot be read with Windows NT up to version 4.0. There's a comment on Fujitsu's web-pages that super-floppy support will be added to NT in the future.
Assume your MO drive is /dev/sdb. To create a partition simply enter fdisk /dev/sdb (or fdisk -b 2048 /dev/sdb with 640MB media and a recent copy of fdisk) as root and go on like you were to partition a hard disk. If unsure about what to do, have a look at the fdisk man page. Next create a file-system on each partition with a command like mke2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb1. For 640MB disks be sure to specify the -b 2048 flag. If you want to use super-floppies instead, leave out the fdisk part and create your file-system on the raw device, for example mke2fs -b 2048 -m 0 /dev/sdb. mke2fs will request confirmation before formatting a raw device. You might want to double check if /dev/sdb *really* is your MO drive and not your hard disk by chance. :) During the boot process (or when loading the low level SCSI module), Linux might moan about an invalid partition table if a super-floppy is in the MO drive. You can safely ignore this message.
*NOTE: Partitions on 2048 byte sectored media were broken throughout the whole 2.1 kernel series, meaning that you can happily partition your media with 2.1.xxx but will be unable to use them with any OS other than Linux 2.1! In other words: DON'T DO IT. If for any reason you still have to access your MOs on Linux 2.1 use super-floppies which do fine. This problem hopefully is completely fixed starting with Linux 2.2.2.
File-systems other than ext2 will work on non-640MB disks as well, for 640MB disks there are some caveats: 2048 byte blocks must be supported by the low level file-system code in the kernel and the appropriate mkfs tool should take an argument like -b 2048 to specify the block size. Kernel requirements are met at least for ext2 and msdos/vfat code in the 2.1.xx kernel line. The above mentioned patches should fix this as well for 2.0.xx kernels. I don't have any experience with other file-systems so I'd appreciate any comments. Of the mkfs tools mke2fs will definitely accept the -b flag. mkdosfs is trickier though: there's no top level maintainer anymore, but some distributions have their own maintainers and ship their own versions. Debian's mkdosfs is one such example. Beginning with version 1.0-17 it supports media with large sector sizes. You have to add an option -S 2048. Pass -I as well if you want to format a super-floppy. The latest Debian version of mkdosfs should always be available from ftp.debian.org. Look out for a package called dosfstools.
For the really curious but still undecided I've crammed up some figures as returned by bonnie. These are for the Fujitsu M2513 spinning at 3600 rpm, an outdated model now replaced by a version spinning at 4300 rpm. I guess the transfer rates for the new drive will scale with the spin ratio or pretty close to it. Tests were performed running a slightly patched 2.2.2pre4 kernel. (Err... looks like I've disabled verify on my drive, better not do that!)
LIMDOW - ext2-filesystem - superfloppy:
-------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
-Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU /sec %CPU
400 1024 16.3 1816 2.8 620 1.7 975 13.5 1952 2.2 41.4 0.7
LIMDOW - vfat-filesystem - superfloppy:
-------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
-Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU /sec %CPU
400 387 8.3 410 2.9 414 3.4 669 13.4 736 5.4 5.2 3.9
The bottom line is: performance on vfat sucks like hell. If you have an option, use ext2!
Here's an example of what accessing the MO look like on my machine:
yksi:~# modprobe scsi_mod scsi: ***** BusLogic SCSI Driver Version 2.1.15 of 17 August 1998 ***** scsi: Copyright 1995-1998 by Leonard N. Zubkoff <lnz@dandelion.com> scsi0: Configuring BusLogic Model BT-930 PCI Ultra SCSI Host Adapter scsi0: Firmware Version: 5.02, I/O Address: 0xDE00, IRQ Channel: 18/Level scsi0: PCI Bus: 0, Device: 15, Address: 0xFE00F000, Host Adapter SCSI ID: 7 scsi0: Parity Checking: Enabled, Extended Translation: Enabled scsi0: Synchronous Negotiation: Ultra, Wide Negotiation: Disabled scsi0: Disconnect/Reconnect: Enabled, Tagged Queuing: Enabled scsi0: Driver Queue Depth: 255, Scatter/Gather Limit: 128 segments scsi0: Tagged Queue Depth: Automatic, Untagged Queue Depth: 3 scsi0: Error Recovery Strategy: Default, SCSI Bus Reset: Enabled scsi0: SCSI Bus Termination: Disabled, SCAM: Disabled scsi0: *** BusLogic BT-930 Initialized Successfully *** scsi0 : BusLogic BT-930 scsi : 1 host. Vendor: PLEXTOR Model: CD-ROM PX-32TS Rev: 1.03 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Vendor: FUJITSU Model: M2513A Rev: 1300 Type: Optical Device ANSI SCSI revision: 02 scsi0: Target 1: Queue Depth 3, Synchronous at 20.0 MB/sec, offset 15 scsi0: Target 3: Queue Depth 3, Synchronous at 10.0 MB/sec, offset 10
Let's create an ext2-based super-floppy on the media:
yksi:~# mke2fs -m 0 -b 2048 /dev/sda
mke2fs 1.12, 9-Jul-98 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
/dev/sda is entire device, not just one partition!
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 3, lun 0
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 2048 bytes. Sectors= 310352 [606 MB] [0.6 GB]
sda: Write Protect is off
sda:
Linux ext2 filesystem format
Filesystem label=
155344 inodes, 310352 blocks
0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Block size=2048 (log=1)
Fragment size=2048 (log=1)
19 block groups
16384 blocks per group, 16384 fragments per group
8176 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
16384, 32768, 49152, 65536, 81920, 98304, 114688,
131072, 147456, 163840, 180224, 196608, 212992, 229376,
245760, 262144, 278528, 294912
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
yksi:~# mount -t ext2 /dev/sda /mnt/mo yksi:~# ls /mnt/mo lost+found yksi:~# df Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/hda6 124407 48963 69020 42% / /dev/hda7 256592 30 243310 0% /tmp /dev/hda8 124407 31750 86233 27% /var /dev/hda9 505440 174092 305244 36% /home /dev/hda10 2028098 1278972 644304 66% /usr /dev/hda11 2028098 1551617 371659 81% /usr/local /dev/sda 601134 26 601108 0% /mnt/mo
/dev/sda /mnt/mo ext2 defaults,noauto 0 0
yksi:/mnt/mo# umount /mnt/mo # (Whoops!) umount: /mnt/mo: device is busy yksi:/mnt/mo# cd .. yksi:/mnt# umount /mnt/mo yksi:/mnt#
Stephan Shuichi Haupt <stephan@bios.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
Hi
I have noticed that there is not much information about
magneto-optical disks in the howto, which may be due to the fact that
these are not very popular in general. In Japan, MO drives are very
common, especially the 3.5' variety with media in 128MB (maybe not
available anymore), 230MB, and recently 640MB sizes. I suppose there
is plenty of info on usage of these drives with Linux in Japanese -
but that does not help most people for some reason ;-) MODs can be
used very much like any removable media and are handy for smaller
backups as the media are relatively inexpensive (about 10US$ / 640MB
as of 10-98). I can only comment on the usage of 230MB drives with
SCSI interface.
Drives used: several, no problems encountered (Olympus, Epson, currently
Mitsubishi MK230LK3). Drives may have strange jumper setting like "Mac
Mode" or such - naturally, disable.
If you decide to get a drive, pay attention to the
cache size - It can speed things up enormously, still speed will be
soso compared to hard disks, of course.
SCSI controllers: NCR53C810-based (Asus PCI-200), Adaptec APA-1460A,
Adaptec AHA2940.
Just install the drive as you would do with an additional SCSI hard
disk. It will show up as such. You don't need a disk in the drive when
booting.
There are two ways to format the disks:
a) A bit like a floppy. Just run mkfs on the raw device i.e. something like
sdb or sdc. I don't recommend this in general (see below).
b) Like a hard disk. Do fdisk on the raw device and then mkfs on the
partition as you would for a hard disk (like sdc0, I have never made
multiple partitions on a MOD).
What I have not tried is to boot from MOD, yet I cannot see why it
should not work. I would only recommend it for emergency system
recovery, however, due to MO drive performance.
Note: Purchased disks for Doze or Windog may be formatted "like
floppies" and cannot be used with either O(gre)S right away while MODs
formatted under linux as hard disks (partition FAT16 / type 6 and
mkdosfs) will work fine (only tested with NT 3.5/4.0). Fdisk will
issue a warning upon exit that concerned FAT16 partitions and you do
better to take it seriously (look at the fdisk man-page). The sector
size will not be automatically set properly for mkdosfs. Use "mkdosfs
-s 8". That came from some Japanese Web site in mid 1995 (Thanks to Ken
Kawabata for finding and deciphering it). Using the vfat file-system
with the disks works fine. I have only used FAT/DOSfs or Linux/ext2
formatted disks so far.
Additional Note: The media are probably a bit sensitive. Of course to
magnetic fields, but also to mechanical stress, some formats seem
to be more fragile than others (Mac format seemingly worst, data loss has
occurred when dropping disks during sneaker net traffic).
Though this does not steer anyone through particularly dense
jungle, it may be nice for completeness.
Steve
--
***********************cut*here*or*do*not********************************
S. Shuichi Haupt
email stephan@bios.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
http://www.bios.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~stephan/
---------------- December 11 1998 update from Steve -------------------
OK, some problems will arise with MO disks occasionally. the safest
way to avoid them is not to use the disks "off the shelf". trying to
mount disks can even result in kernel panics. i accidentally tried to
mount a 640MB disk (format windows95 it said, so maybe FAT32) as -t
vfat, this is not a thing to try.
also, 2.0.x kernels don't support 2048b block size (also 640MB disks).
a patch for 2.0.3x kernels seems to float around somewhere in Japan,
but i have not yet gotten hold of it. here a link that certainly has
an English description:
http://elektra.e-technik.uni-ulm.de/~mbuck/linux/patches.html
or search the u-tokyo.ac.jp domain. the page of the developers is
hidden somewhere.
the best way to use these 640MB disks is therefore to do fdisk and
mkfs first. i have only done this with mke2fs on type 83 partitions:
mke2fs -b 2048 /dev/sdxy
i will check it out for FAT16 partitions and mkdosfs when i have some
spare time and disks.
my kernel version used is 2.1.124 (for all of the above).
Steve
--
***********************cut*here*or*do*not********************************
Stephan Shuichi
office: Dept. for Mechano-Informatics, Yoshizawa Lab.
Faculty for Engineering, University of Tokyo
Tel 03-3812-2111 ext 6390, FAX 03-5802-2957
email stephan@bios.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
http://www.bios.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~stephan/
private: --
You've probably already received a number of messages regarding the Fujitsu DynaMO 640 - I have the 640SZI, which is the internal version; the model number given in a SCSI probe is M2513-MCC3064SS. I recently installed this drive practically without a hitch. I say practically because the sector size of the 640 MB disks is 2048 bytes, which is not supported in the Linux 2.0.x kernel but is supported in the development kernels. A patch for 2.0.x is available at http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~orschaer/mo/ -- also at this site is a patched fdisk to use in conjunction with it. Otherwise, installing the drive was no different from installing a SCSI hard drive. It runs well, and I'm very happy with it. Phil Garcia
philip_kerr_at_wmc__brsf2@wmcmail.wmc.ac.uk
Dear Skip
In your Optical HOWTO, you asked for anyone else's experiences of
installing optical drives under Linux.
Please find below details of how I managed to get a Panasonic LF-7010
(SCSI) working on my Sparc Classic.
I'm using Redhat, 4.2 and 5.1
Regards
Philip Kerr
philip.kerr@wmc.ac.uk
ps I'm now trying to get the drive to work under Solaris 2.6... it's
not an easy a job as it was under Linux!!
------------------------
plugged the drive in (on id5)...
powered up the Sparc...
the following came up....
scsi0 : Sparc ESP100A-FAST
scsi : 1 host.
Vendor: SAMSUNG Model: WN32162U Rev: 0100
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 3, lun 0
Vendor: MATSHITA Model: LF-7010 (00:06) Rev: 1.42
Type: Optical Device ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi removable disk sdb at scsi0, channel 0, id 5, lun 0 scsi
: detected 2 SCSI disks total.
esp0: target 3 [period 100ns offset 15 10.00MHz FAST SCSI-II]
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 4236661 [2068 MB]
[2.1 GB]
esp0: target 5 [period 248ns offset 4 4.03MHz synchronous SCSI] sdb :
READ CAPACITY failed.
sdb : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28 sdb : extended
sense code = 2
sdb : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
sunlance.c:v1.9 21/Aug/96 Miguel de Icaza (miguel@nuclecu.unam.mx)
eth0: LANCE 08:00:20:04:3d:cf
eth0: using auto-carrier-detection.
Partition check:
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8
sdb:scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:10, sector 0, absolute sector 0 unable
to read partition table
I edited my fstab, adding the entry for the drive (on sdb)
==========
/etc/fstab
==========
/dev/sda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy msdos noauto,user 0 0
/dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,user 0 0
/dev/sdb /mnt/optical ext2 noauto,rw,user 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
Then mkfs'ed a blank disc as follows...
[root@localhost me]# /sbin/mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sdb
mke2fs 1.10, 24-Apr-97 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 /dev/sdb is entire
device, not just one partition! Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
Linux ext2 filesystem format
Filesystem label=
118320 inodes, 472448 blocks
23622 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=1
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
58 block groups
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group 2040 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
8193, 16385, 24577, 32769, 40961, 49153, 57345, 65537, 73729, 81921,
90113, 98305, 106497, 114689, 122881, 131073, 139265,
147457,
155649, 163841, 172033, 180225, 188417, 196609, 204801,
212993, 221185,
229377, 237569, 245761, 253953, 262145, 270337, 278529,
286721, 294913,
303105, 311297, 319489, 327681, 335873, 344065, 352257,
360449, 368641,
376833, 385025, 393217, 401409, 409601, 417793, 425985,
434177, 442369,
450561, 458753, 466945
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
rebooted...
mounted the drive...
I've since then edited the fstab, adding the following mount-point...
/dev/sdb /mnt/dostical msdos noauto,rw,user 0 0
I can now mount ext2 or dos formatted optical carts by mounting either
optical or dostical.
Dear Skip, hoping that this is interesting for other Linux-Users, I want to tell You about my experiences with optical disks under Linux: I use an internal 640 MB MO-Drive with IDE-Interface from Fujitsu with Linux-Kernel 2.2.x and in the meantime it works fine. At Germany this drive is sold as DYNAMO 640 AI but according to it's firmware it is a MCC 3064 AP. Booting kernel 2.2.x the drive is detected like "hdx: FUJITSU MCC3064AP, ATAPI OPTICAL drive". No driver is loaded, as there still is no ATAPI- driver for optical disks. Older kernels (2.0.x) do not detect the drive correctly and surely need some patches. To use the drive I need kernel support for SCSI-emulation. So I compile this (ide-scsi.o) as a module together with the SCSI-disk-support (sd_mod.o). Making a "modprobe ide-scsi", the drive shows up in /proc/scsi/scsi. If it isn't done by kerneld I have to make "modprobe sd_mod" to be ready to mount the preformatted MO-disk. If I want to use the disks with Dos/Windows, I use the Dos/Windows-tools for formatting. I tried mkdosfs under Linux too, but then most files on the disk seemed to be corrupted for Dos. They were still o.k. for Linux and could be restored without problems. With the Dos-tools I prefer the Superfloppy-Format as this can be used with most operating-systems and it is slightly faster in comparison to a partitioned disk. This disks can be mounted like other Windows-Disks (e.g. "mount -t vfat /dev/sdx /mountpoint"). Disks for Linux should be in ext2-Format. The 640 MB disks are hardsectored with 2048 bytes/sector (smaller media aren't.) . This is no problem for kernel 2.2.x, but fdisk and mke2fs do not agree in how to manage this geometry. So I don't use fdisk anyway and format the disks with "mke2fs -b 2048 /dev/sdx". I have to tell mke2fs about the 2048 bytes/sector with the "-b"-option, otherwise the format will fail. Mke2fs than asks to really do his job, as it has do format the whole disk not a single partion and I answer with "y". Now the disk can be mounted with "mount -t ext2 /dev/sdx /mountpoint", which gives a warning in /var/log/messages about a nonexisting partion-table. This is o.k. as fdisk wasn't used and I can now use the disk. The MO-Disks are slow, but the most reliable media available. Smaller disks (230 MB) are hardsectored for 512 bytes/sector and can be partioned with fdisk. before formatting. This should be true for the 512 MB disks, but I didn't test it. Best regards and thanks for Your support for Linux, Guido Brunner
Dear Skip, I recently aquired a LF-7010 for a project. My experience getting it up for Linux under ext2 mirrors what you already have. The msdos and vfat file systems also worked. The project I was working on was based on a SunOS/Solaris formatted MO disk. While it *should* have worked under the ufs file system, using Redhat 5.2 and the stock 3.0.36 kernel it didn't. I got, installed, debugged and compiled the u2fs into the kernel and it DID mount the SunOS/Solaris MO disk. Please write if you need/want additional details. -Donald Donald Kerns <dkerns@cruzio.com>
Hi Skip, following your request of info from everyone else who is playing with optical disks under Linux, here I am. I'm an happy user of a PIONEER DE-C7001, mounted in my linux box controlled by a PCI SYMBIOS (NCR) 53c815 SCSI controller and running slackware 4. After having set the jumpers in the correct way ( all the technical docs are still available in the Pioneer web pages) and configured the kernel for SCSI support ( generic SCSI support and support for SCSI disks), it works. Here you have the boot details: sym53c8xx: at PCI bus 0, device 8, function 0 sym53c8xx: not initializing, device not supported ncr53c8xx: at PCI bus 0, device 8, function 0 ncr53c8xx: 53c815 detected ncr53c815-0: rev=0x04, base=0xe8000000, io_port=0xe000, irq=11 ncr53c815-0: ID 7, Fast-10, Parity Checking ncr53c815-0: restart (scsi reset). scsi0 : ncr53c8xx - version 3.2a-2 scsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices scsi : 2 hosts. Vendor: PIONEER Model: DE-C7001 Rev: 0500 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 01 CCS Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0 Vendor: ARCHIVE Model: VIPER 150 21247 Rev: -005 Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 01 Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 2, lun 0 Vendor: PHILIPS Model: CDD3600 CD-R/RW Rev: 2.00 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Detected scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0 scsi : detected 1 SCSI tape 1 SCSI cdrom 1 SCSI disk total. ncr53c815-0-<6,*>: FAST-10 SCSI 10.0 MB/s (100 ns, offset 8) sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 2x/6x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.55 ncr53c815-0-<1,*>: FAST-5 SCSI 5.0 MB/s (200 ns, offset 8) sda : READ CAPACITY failed. sda : status = 1, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28 sda : extended sense code = 2 sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB. PPP: version 2.3.7 (demand dialling) TCP compression code copyright 1989 Regents of the University of California PPP line discipline registered. 3c59x.c:v0.99H 11/17/98 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html Partition check: sda:scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0 unable to read partition table hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 Once the drive has been recognized by the system, I inserted a new disk and I created a partition on it with: # fdisk /dev/sdanew file system on it : After this step I created a new file system : # mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sda1 Linux ext2 filesystem format Filesystem label= 79872 inodes, 318448 blocks 15922 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=1 Block size=1024 (log=0) Fragment size=1024 (log=0) 39 block groups 8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group 2048 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 8193, 16385, 24577, 32769, 40961, 49153, 57345, 65537, 73729, 81921, 90113, 98305, 106497, 114689, 122881, 131073, 139265, 147457, 155649, 163841, 172033, 180225, 188417, 196609, 204801, 212993, 221185, 229377, 237569, 245761, 253953, 262145, 270337, 278529, 286721, 294913, 303105, 311297 Writing inode tables: 0/39 ..... 38/39 done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done and then the disk is usable and accessible as a normal SCSI disk. I don't have modified the /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab files, because I prefer to mount the disk manually when needed. Now I need your help. In my office, I have 3 LMS ( Philips ) LF4500 rapid changer that are completely not used. The LF4500 holds 5 12" WORM optical disk. double sided 5,6 GB capacity. They were originally used with a SPARC 1+ controller and a software written for solaris 1.x. The controllers and the original sw are completely gone ( nobody knows where they are !). I will try to connect one of thisLF4500 to my linux box. I will let you know the results but I think I'll be able to see only the drive but not the disk exchange device. Could please help in find out more info/SW in order to fully drive this rapid changer ? :-) I work for Philips Medical Systems but I'm not able to find more info on this formerly Philips product. Regards Paolo Droghetti <paolo.droghetti@philips.com>
Hi Skip, I've used your 'Linux-Optical Disk HOWTO' to setup our magneto-optical drive. You mentioned somewhere in the HOWTO that you'd like to receive additional informations, and since I've used a drive which was not included, I'd like to tell you about it. Hope it can help someone! Used hardware: INTEL Pentium 90 SCSI-Controller ADAPTEC 2940 MO-Drive Fujitsu MCD3130SS (1.3 GB Capacity) Software: S.u.S.E.-LINUX 6.1, Kernel-Version 2.2.5 There is no "native" driver for the 2940AU, so I used the "aic7xxx" which I load as a module during bootup (I didn't want to compile a new kernel, because I need many other features, and expect of the MO-Drive, everything worked fine before. So, why "change a running system"?!) I can mount the MO-Disk, no matter what filesystem is used, entirely. In addition to that, I set up autofs to ease my work: in /etc/auto.misc, I added the line: ==================/SNIP/=============== /misc/mo-disk -fs auto /dev/sda1 ==================/SNAP/============== With that, I even don't need to mount the drive, I can access it whenever I want, no matter what filesystem is used (tested with MSDOS and ext2-fs) Finally, I used SAMBA to export the drive to our WIN95-Clients with the following inserted in /etc/smb.conf: =======================/SNIP/====================== [mo-disk] path = /misc/mo-disk public = yes writeable = yes ;write-only can of course still be controlled by flipping the ;write-protect-switch at the MO-Disk! readable = yes browseable = yes =======================/SNAP/======================= (for further details abt. SAMBA, refer to the excellent HOWTO) Now, every WIN-Client can use the MO-Drive as if it was a local hdd, with one (minor) caveat: When you map the exported SAMBA-Drive to a drive letter in WIN Explorer, it's impossible to umount it under LINUX! Everytime you try, you get a "device busy"... So, unfortunately I can't map the drive during startup in WIN95, but I think with some hacking in the SAMBA-Code this problem could be solved... I don't have the time at the moment, but perhaps somewhat later I will try to "dig into the code" to do the hack. Of course you can include my e-amil-address in the HOWTO, but please use my private one: dh9dat@cityweb.de instead of ds@leiterplattentechnik.de! with regards, Harald Husemann LINUX - the operating system for people whose IQ is greater than 98... Harald Husemann <ds@www.leiterplattentechnik.de>
Hi, Just stumbled across your page on Tucows (dated Dec '98 so I hope this still reaches you). You asked if anyone had any experience with optical storage etc. under Linux, which I have, so here it is! I worked for Ericsson (UK) Ltd. and some of their telephone switches use optical media for system backups. I have used these optical drives on i386 Linux boxes for some years now, with no problems whatsoever. The units in question are the Ricoh RO-5031E (scsi) and it's bigger brother, which unfortunately I cannot remember that name of (also Ricoh + scsi). The RO-5031E is a full-height, 5.25in magneto-optical drive that uses 650Mb disk cartridges (325Mb per side), such as Sony's EDM-650B. The other drive has similar spec but can use both 1.3Gb and 650Mb disks. Ricoh's website may have more on these drives, but they're quite long in the tooth now and may not feature anymore. Usage was very simple - The drives were treated almost as scsi fixed disks. Pop a new disk in, use fdisk to create your filesystem (I've tried both ext2 & msdos) then format with mkfs. That's it! The one weird thing I did find was that a RedHat 6.x system (2.2.x kernel) would not read a filesystem that had been created on an old Slackware (2.0.x kernel) system, and vice versa. Other than that, 100 million re-writes... thankyou very much!!! All the best // Jem P.S. Please feel free to include my email if I've been of any help. jem <jem@monty.ericsson.se>
I have used a Maxoptix T6-5200 with re-writable MO media without any problems. Donovan Allen admin@robot-factory.net
Maxoptix TMT3-1300 Magneto Optical drive. Accepts 1Gb and 1.3Gb magneto-optical read/write cartridges, these are double sided, so half the capacity is on each side, and the cartridge needs to be ejected to access the opposing side.
When configuring a Maxoptix drive for Linux, it should be configured such that the Removable Media Report Disable switch is OFF (the dip switch bank S2, switch 3 is OFF, i.e. in down position).
When configuring a Maxoptix drive for Linux, it should NOT be configured such that Removable Media Report Disable is switched ON (the dip switch bank S2, switch 3 is ON, i.e. in up position).
Setting this switch ON will set the RMB (removable media bit) to 0. This would indicate to Linux that the media is NOT removable, but Linux of course still allows one to eject it using the command eject /dev/sda or by pressing the invitingly large button on the drive itself. This could have the consequence of accidentally corrupting any of the good data stored on cartridges inserted subsequently, since Linux has still cached the directory information of the previous disk.
When the RMB is 0, even after the cartridge is ejected, it is possible to perform the mount command, and have it 'succeed', since Linux has still got the directory structure of the previous disk cached in its buffers, which have not been flushed. One way to force Linux to flush its buffers in this situation, is to do the following sequence: eject /dev/sda (do NOT insert a new cartridge before performing the next two steps)
mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/max umount /mnt/max Note that this will show the following on the console (Ctrl+Alt+F10): Dec 14 19:32:14 kernel: SCSI disk error : host 1 channel 0 id 6 lun 0 return code = 28000000 Dec 14 19:32:14 kernel: [valid=0] Info fld=0x0, Current sd08:05: sense key Not Ready Dec 14 19:32:14 kernel: Additional sense indicates Medium not present Dec 14 19:32:14 kernel: scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:05, sector 2 Dec 14 19:32:14 kernel: SCSI disk error : host 1 channel 0 id 6 lun 0 return code = 28000000 Dec 14 19:32:14 kernel: [valid=0] Info fld=0x0, Current sd08:05: sense key Not Ready Dec 14 19:32:14 kernel: Additional sense indicates Medium not present Dec 14 19:32:14 kernel: scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:05, sector 2 Now we can insert the new disk, and the new disk's directory structure will appear correctly as expected. This method is very error-prone, and not recommended as it is very easy to forget to perform the 'dummy' mount before inserting a disk, with the consequence of wiping out good data on the new disk. The reason this method works is that Linux normally only calls invalidate_buffers() (see the file sd.c in the routine check_media_change()) if the RMB is set to 1, and the above sequence forces Linux to call invalidate_buffers() once it notices that it can't mount the filesystem. Performing the 'dummy' mount/unmount after ejecting forces Linux to call invalidate_buffers(). For Linux, to avoid using the above workaround, we should always have the Removable Media Report Disable switch OFF (dip switch bank S2, switch 3, OFF, i.e. in down position). When the Removable Media Report Disable switch is correctly set to OFF, then attempting to mount the drive when the cartridge is not present will show the following on the console (Ctrl+Alt+F10): Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda : READ CAPACITY failed. Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28 Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda : extended sense code = 2 Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB. Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda:scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0 Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: unable to read partition table Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda : READ CAPACITY failed. Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28 Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda : extended sense code = 2 Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB. Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: sda:scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0 Dec 14 21:35:16 kernel: unable to read partition table -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When using the drive by means of an Adaptec PCMCIA card in slot 0, if disk is in drive, when the command: # cardctl insert 0 is performed, we see the following message on the console (Ctrl+Alt+F10): Dec 14 19:05:31 kernel: aha152x: processing commandline: ok Dec 14 19:05:31 kernel: aha152x: BIOS test: passed, detected 1 controller(s) Dec 14 19:05:31 kernel: aha152x0: vital data: PORTBASE=0x140, IRQ=3, SCSI ID=7, reconnect=enabled, parity=enabled, synchronous=disabled, delay=100, extended translation=disabled Dec 14 19:05:31 kernel: aha152x: trying software interrupt, ok. Dec 14 19:05:31 kernel: scsi1 : Adaptec 152x SCSI driver; $Revision$ Dec 14 19:05:31 kernel: scsi : 2 hosts. Dec 14 19:05:32 kernel: Vendor: Maxoptix Model: T3-1304 Rev: 1.1c Dec 14 19:05:32 kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Dec 14 19:05:32 kernel: Detected scsi disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 6, lun 0 Dec 14 19:05:32 kernel: SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 904995 [441 MB] [0.4 GB] Dec 14 19:05:33 kernel: sda: sda1 < sda5 > If no disk is inserted when booting Linux, get the following message on the console: Dec 14 18:55:23 kernel: Detected scsi disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 6, lun 0 Dec 14 18:55:24 kernel: sda: Spinning up disk....<7>ROM image dump: Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: ...................................................................................................not responding... Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: sda : READ CAPACITY failed. Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28 Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: sda : extended sense code = 2 Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB. Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: sda:SCSI disk error : host 1 channel 0 id 6 lun 0 return code = 28000000 Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: [valid=0] Info fld=0x0, Current sd08:00: sense key Not Ready Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: Additional sense indicates Medium not present Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0 Dec 14 18:57:02 kernel: unable to read partition table Dec 14 18:57:03 kernel: scsi2 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.25/3.2.4 Dec 14 18:57:03 kernel: <Adaptec PCMCIA SCSI controller> Dec 14 18:57:03 kernel: scsi : 3 hosts. Dec 14 18:57:08 kernel: scsi : 2 hosts. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When using the disks which come pre-formatted with 1024 bytes per sector, it's important to use the -b 1024 flag with fdisk, otherwise the partitioning isn't correctly written by the hardware, and mke2fs hangs, so that the system cannot be shutdown cleanly. When making the filesystem using mke2fs, don't use the defaults, since depending on the media size, the block size which is chosen by mke2fs might only be 1024, which is way too small. We want to always use 4096 as the block size, otherwise writing to the disk becomes very slow indeed. So for a disk with 1024-bytes per sector, the sequence of commands would be: # fdisk -b 1024 /dev/sda # mke2fs -b 4096 -m 0 /dev/sda5 # e2fsck -f -B 4096 /dev/sda5 -b 98304 (-b 98304 uses an alternate superblock) # mke2fs -b 4096 -m 0 /dev/sda5 mke2fs 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 79680 inodes, 159216 blocks 0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 5 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 15936 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304 Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done # time (cp ~guest/kernel/linux-2.2.15.tar.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 0m28.411s user 0m0.010s sys 0m2.590s # time (cp ~guest/kernel/*.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 3m54.046s user 0m0.060s sys 0m2.910s ----------------------------------------------------------------------- For 512-byte sectors, the output of mke2fs is as follows for a 1G disk: # mke2fs -m 0 /dev/sda5 mke2fs 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=1024 (log=0) Fragment size=1024 (log=0) 112896 inodes, 451552 blocks 0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=1 56 block groups 8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group 2016 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 8193, 24577, 40961, 57345, 73729, 204801, 221185, 401409 Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done # time (cp ~guest/kernel/*.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 3m54.046s user 0m0.060s sys 0m2.910s -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note the difference in storage of a disk formatted for 1024 bytes per sectos, and 512 bytes per sector, for the same 1.3GB capacity claimed on the disk label. It is about 9.5% more for the 1024 format. 1.3 GB 512 bytes/sector: df -k . Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 572436 740 571696 0% /mnt/max 1.3 GB 1024 bytes/sector, using 4096 block size in mke2fs: df -k . Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 626840 112208 514632 18% /mnt/max -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the output of fdisk partitioning created by Win98 on the 1.3GB 1024 bytes/sector disk: Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 311 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 1024 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 ? 937477 1203315 544437093 20 Unknown Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(356, 97, 46) logical=(937476, 3, 15) Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(1203314, 30, 19) Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(357, 116, 40) should be (357, 63, 32) /dev/sda2 ? 649505 912677 538976288 6b Unknown Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(288, 110, 57) logical=(649504, 0, 11) Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(269, 101, 57) logical=(912676, 1, 10) Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(269, 101, 57) should be (269, 63, 32) /dev/sda3 ? 263179 945973 1398362912 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux3 Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(345, 32, 19) logical=(263178, 26, 16) Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(324, 77, 19) logical=(945972, 51, 15) Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(324, 77, 19) should be (324, 63, 32) /dev/sda4 * 680971 680981 21337 49 Unknown Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(87, 1, 0) logical=(680970, 34, 16) Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(335, 78, 2) logical=(680980, 61, 8) Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(335, 78, 2) should be (335, 63, 32) Command (m for help): q Similarly, this is the output of fdisk partitioning created by Win98 on the 1GB 512 bytes/sector disk: # fdisk -b 512 /dev/sda Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 441 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 ? 937477 1203315 272218546+ 20 Unknown Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(356, 97, 46) logical=(937476, 3, 15) Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(1203314, 30, 19) Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(357, 116, 40) should be (357, 63, 32) /dev/sda2 ? 649505 912677 269488144 6b Unknown Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(288, 110, 57) logical=(649504, 0, 11) Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(269, 101, 57) logical=(912676, 1, 10) Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(269, 101, 57) should be (269, 63, 32) /dev/sda3 ? 263179 945973 699181456 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux3 Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(345, 32, 19) logical=(263178, 26, 16) Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(324, 77, 19) logical=(945972, 51, 15) Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(324, 77, 19) should be (324, 63, 32) /dev/sda4 * 680971 680981 10668+ 49 Unknown Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(87, 1, 0) logical=(680970, 34, 16) Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(335, 78, 2) logical=(680980, 61, 8) Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary: phys=(335, 78, 2) should be (335, 63, 32) Question: Which partition is the data in, and how do we mount it? None of the start/end values make any sense to Linux. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comparison of media sizes and speeds: ===================================== Using the following files: # ls -l ~guest/kernel/*gz -rw-r----- 1 guest users 16371764 May 24 2000 /home/guest/kernel/linux-2.2.15.tar.gz -rw-rw-rw- 1 guest users 17106471 Jun 15 2000 /home/guest/kernel/linux-2.2.16.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 guest users 20881782 May 25 2000 /home/guest/kernel/linux-2.3.99-pre9.tar.gz -rw-rw-rw- 1 guest users 21085275 Jun 16 2000 /home/guest/kernel/linux-2.4.0-test1.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 guest users 22888582 Oct 3 08:36 /home/guest/kernel/linux-2.4.0-test9.tar.gz The tests consisted of simply copying the above files to the drive. Sometimes the media is new, sometimes previously written to. It seems that new media is slightly faster to write to. %-------------------------------------------------------------------------------% On media identified as follows: P/N 2015382-0010 Max-GL (Optical Glass) Jukebox Certified Rewritable 1.3GB 512 # fdisk /dev/sda Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 568 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 568 581616 5 Extended /dev/sda5 1 568 581600 83 Linux # mke2fs -m 0 -b 4096 /dev/sda5 mke2fs 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 72800 inodes, 145400 blocks 0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 5 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 14560 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304 Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 572436 20 572416 0% /mnt/max # time (cp ~guest/kernel/linux-2.2.15.tar.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 0m29.099s user 0m0.010s sys 0m1.430s # time (cp ~guest/kernel/*.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 4m18.446s user 0m0.010s sys 0m3.880s %-------------------------------------------------------------------------------% On media identified as follows: P/N 1015386RW Max-GL (Optical Glass) Jukebox Certified Rewritable 1GB 512 fdisk shows: Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 441 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 441 451568 5 Extended /dev/sda5 1 441 451552 83 Linux # mke2fs -m 0 -b 4096 /dev/sda5 mke2fs 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 112896 inodes, 112888 blocks 0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 4 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 28224 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304 Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 437384 20 437364 0% /mnt/max # time (cp ~guest/kernel/linux-2.2.15.tar.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 0m34.220s user 0m0.100s sys 0m5.610s # time (cp ~guest/kernel/*.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 4m8.846s user 0m0.280s sys 0m28.500s %-------------------------------------------------------------------------------% On media identified as follows: (obtained from eBay:Borismcbin) MaxEP Rewritable 1GB 512 (Tahiti P/N 1015387-0040) Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 437384 20 437364 0% /mnt/max # time (cp ~guest/kernel/linux-2.2.15.tar.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 0m30.321s user 0m0.010s sys 0m1.340s # time (cp ~guest/kernel/*.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 3m32.851s user 0m0.010s sys 0m4.340s %-------------------------------------------------------------------------------% On media identified as follows: (obtained from eBay:Surpuluseller) MaxEP Rewritable 1.2GB 512 (P/N: PN2015383RW) "Maxoptix PN2015383RW FORMATTED ERASABLE OPTICAL CARTRIDGE 1.2 GIGABYTE 512 BYTES/SECTOR" # fdisk /dev/sda Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 568 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 568 581616 5 Extended /dev/sda5 1 568 581600 83 Linux # mke2fs -m 0 -b 4096 /dev/sda5 mke2fs 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 72800 inodes, 145400 blocks 0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 5 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 14560 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304 Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 572436 20 572416 0% /mnt/max # time (cp ~guest/kernel/linux-2.2.15.tar.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 0m28.979s user 0m0.000s sys 0m2.600s # time (cp ~guest/kernel/*.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 4m0.486s user 0m0.000s sys 0m1.400s %-------------------------------------------------------------------------------% On media identified as follows: HEWLLET PACKARD REWRITABLE OPTICAL DISK (Type R/W - CC Format) 1.3 Gbytes 1024 Byte/Sector Reorder No: 92280T Made in Japan. # fdisk -b 1024 /dev/sda Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 311 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 1024 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 311 636896 5 Extended /dev/sda5 1 311 636864 83 Linux Command (m for help): q Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 626840 20 626820 0% /mnt/max # mke2fs -m 0 -b 4096 /dev/sda5 mke2fs 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 79680 inodes, 159216 blocks 0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 5 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 15936 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304 Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done # time (cp ~guest/kernel/linux-2.2.15.tar.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 0m28.411s user 0m0.020s sys 0m1.570s # time (cp ~guest/kernel/*.gz .;sync;sync;sync) real 4m19.854s user 0m0.010s sys 0m2.350s %-------------------------------------------------------------------------------% Peter Knaggs <Peter.Knaggs@oracle.com>
Alexander supplied me with some very informative points. He has ask me to pass that information on to you. Without fully understanding all areas that he knows, I am attempting to pass it on to you as best I can;
There are two kind of 3.5" Magneto Optical drives : DynamMO and GigaMO
DynaMO : 128Mb, 230Mb, 540Mb and 640Mb (this drive has 2048Kb/sector)
GigaMO : 1.3Gb, 2.3Gb (2048Kb/sector)
(Sony, Fujitsu) has a models with different interfaces : SCSI, IDE/ATAPI, USB, FireWire, PCMCIA. I think, we should expand your HOWTO to this models.
For example, to work with IDE/ATAPI interface you should install "ide-scsi" kernel module :
# modprobe ide-scsi # dmesg .... sscsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices Vendor: IomintSA Model: MCE3130AP-MO1300 Rev: 0011 Type: Optical Device ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Attached scsi removable disk sdb at scsi1, channel 0, id 1, lun 0 SCSI device sdb: 605846 2048-byte hdwr sectors (1241 MB) sdb: Write Protect is off sdb:
You could use "mtool" package to access a FAT/VFAT on MO. Mtools page to FAT and VFAT File systems
First of all, you should define a new drive M: in /etc/mtools.conf ===== drive m: file="/dev/sdb" ===== # minfo m: # mformat m: # mdir m: You should use -I key to format MO media with mkfs.vfat : # mkfs.vfat -I -v /dev/sdb Unfortunately, Linux kernel uses bogus MO drive geometry even for SCSI drives. It makes sense only for BPB FAT filesystem (ext2fs does not depend on drive geometry). To compatibility with Windows system you should use real geometry (1 Head) while formatting. (See cartridge specifications for real geometry.) For example for 230Mb DynaMO you should define in /etc/mtools.conf ===== drive m: file="/dev/sdb" cylinders=17853 heads=1 sectors=25 mformat_only ===== # mformat m: ... ## minfo m: Alexander Voropay <alec@vmb-service.ru>
I have no experience with optical jukeboxes with Linux!!!! I have had experiences with Optical jukeboxes under HP-UX. In this setup the jukebox had a SCSI address of it's own. Each slot in the jukebox had an associated LUN number. A device name was assigned for each disk slot A side and B side. The mount command was run against the appropriate device name. I had a jukebox with just one drive and 16 optical disk slots - 20 Gig. I thought it was going to be a real hassle to write a disk mount manager to share this drive among users until I discovered you can mount as many disk as you want and the jukebox driver takes care of arbitration - what a nice feature. Granted, you only want archive type data here and your overall system configuration to be such that not too many processes will be accessing the jukebox at the same time. The disk spin down, carriage load, carriage move, carriage unload, carriage move to the next disk, carriage next disk load, carriage move, optical drive load, and spin up takes about 12 seconds - "seek-from-hell".
Hi, I was reading your howto (a life saver, thanks) and I was wondering what kind of jukebox you were running? I have a Maxoptix 520 Jukebox (20 disks at 2.6G each, nice!) and I would like to connect it to a Linux box and serve the drives up to my users, but I'm having problems accessing the individual drives. Currently I can only access the two drives and something called MAXLYB which I think is a controller device of some sort. Basically, I'm wondering if the jukebox you had was the same or similar and how you set it up. I know that you did it under HP-UX, but any help right now would be nice. Hey, I'll even let you log into my linux server if you want to take a look at the jukebox and see what it does. You can't beat 52Gig of storage! Anyway, I'd really appreciate your help. Zed A. Shaw Application Systems Analyst Arizona State University
> It sounds like your Maxoptix 520 is a jukebox with two physical disk. Yep, that's the one. > > All jukeboxes have a carriage controller. This is probably your MAXLYB > device. > ... What I've come to find out is that Maxoptix is pretty stingy when it comes to drivers. Apparently, they don't make driver software for any of their Jukebox carriage controller interfaces! I don't know how some of these companies stay in business. I'm going to pester them again soon, but you are right, this thing will need a carriage controller driver to operate. The cool thing is that this MX520 (that's the model number of the juke) emulates a whole slew of other carriage controllers, so maybe one of those other guys has a driver. I'll be looking into that too. > > You might want to get a-hold of Maxoptix and see if they have a install > package for your linux kernel version. If not ask them for the programmers > specification for the carriage controller and maybe we can write one! > Hey, if I can't find any driver software, and I can convince Maxoptix to give me the specs, I'd be more than glad to write a driver. I'd could sure use the help too since I haven't got enough time to do it on my own. Also, do you know of anyone else doing this that we might be able to hack off of? > Any information you find, let me know and we will roll the information > into the Optical HOWTO, acknowledgments of course! > Sure, but let me get some new information first. So far things are looking pretty bleak. > > >Basically, I'm wondering if the jukebox you had was the same or similar > >and how you set it up. I know that you did it under HP-UX, but any help > >right now would be nice. Hey, I'll even let you log into my linux > >server if you want to take a look at the jukebox and see what it does. > >You can't beat 52Gig of storage! > > Nice. At home I can use PPP to mount my 84 platter HP-UX jukebox. > It's slow though - I wish I had it at home. Oh, I don't have this thing at home. There's no way I could afford the $30,000 my boss paid for this thing. But he's stuck with it and has had it sitting around collecting dust for a year, so he's letting me play with it and try to find a use for it. I'll get back with you when I have some more information. It should be sometime this week when I find out if I can get it to work or not. Zed
Skip Please find some guff on MO drives and SCSI agony ... Note that the Changer software mentioned should work for virtually any changer :-) Now back to dreaming of cheap highbandwidth inet connections for home use. British Telecom really get on my !"£***& Cheers Jon Gerdes Some notes on firing up SCSI changer support for a Magneto Optical jukebox using "scsi-changer" ============================================================== LSM entry from distribution used: Title: scsi-changer Version: 0.14 Entered-date: 9 May 1998 Description: SCSI Media Changer device driver (for the robot mechanism of MO/CD Jukeboxes, tape libraries, ...). autofs support included. This is a BETA version. Keywords: scsi jukebox changer driver Author: Gerd Knorr <kraxel@cs.tu-berlin.de> Maintained-by: Gerd Knorr <kraxel@cs.tu-berlin.de> Primary-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/kernel/patches/scsi 22kB scsi-changer-0.14.tar.gz 627 scsi-changer.lsm Alternate-site: none Original-site: none Platform: Linux Copying-policy: GNU GPL =============================================================== Latest version from here: http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/linux.html Tested on: HP SurestoreOptical 40fx (1 drive 15x2.4Gb MO disks) Adaptec 1520B (dodgy ISA 10MBs-1 SCSI II card) Linux Mandrake 6.1 Kernel 2.2.13 and 2.2.14 tar -xzvf changer-0.14.tar.gz read the README Note that this program should work for most SCSI devices involving a robotic picker and media slots. patch kernel: copy ch-2.2.7.diff to /usr/src/linux (ie kernel source) patch -p1 < ch-2.2.7.diff Compile in changer support to kernel: make xconfig or menuconfig or just config go to scsi section and tick changer support put in NFS and automounter (see below) while you are at it. If your using it as a module then add this to /etc/conf.modules: alias char-major-86 ch (no problems found using it as a module - recommended method of use) run /usr/src/linux/drivers/MAKEDEV.sch (created by .diff) to create the changer dev entries, one for the changer and one for the reader if you have more than one reader, you will need more /dev/schx's (see <src>/Documentation/devices.txt - again added by .diff) Run make in the changer source directory I had to copy scsi_ioctl.h to changer source directory and amend the Makefile. Not sure why, so read and change the Makefile if compiler gives errors about such a file not found (find /usr/src/linux -name <file_to_find> might be handy) copy binaries to /sbin (or /usr/sbin or whatever to taste) mover load 0 fdisk /dev/sda (create sda1) mke2fs -b 1024 /dev/sda1 1273011 mover unload 0 mover load 1 fdisk ... etc "mover mv d0 d0 1" will rotate disk in drive 1 etc etc fdisk was OK but mke2fs had problems determining the correct geometry. the number of blocks came from dmesg report hence specifying everything explicitly - your milage may vary. The block size was printed on the disks as well as from "dmesg" The above is crying out for a quick script to shuffle through the lot. mover without switches will show the contents of the box. make sure that scsi supports > 1Gb on Adaptec 1520B - aha152x needs (in /etc/lilo.conf): append="aha152x=0x340,10,7,1,1,0,100,1" check source for meaning of parameters. I also had a weird problem where the adaptec driver appeared to caused Lilo to forget much of the append= line - pretty esoteric but it may afflict someone else. I had a Frame Buffer init string in there as well and after swapping these around (ie SCSI bit first then the video bit it worked) The adapter BIOS had to be adjusted slightly in the CTRL-A menu on boot to also enable extended translation. If the geometry is wrong then mke2fs will attempt to access incorrect addresses. This causes the kernel to go absolutly mad, printing lots of errors to the root console and filling up the system log. I had to use shift-alt-sysreq-b to re-boot after synching disks, when I got it wrong :-( My console was totally unusable with hundreds of messages scrolling up it. So if this might happen to you, make sure that the "Magic Syskey" is enabled (see kernel docs.) Alternatively do it in X from an xterm, that way you can kill the job from another one ... Now dig out the automounter (instructions in README). The devices are /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 (or similar) not the /dev/schx jobs. Remember to have automounter and nfs support in the kernel. Attempting to cd /jukebox/0 will get the jukie to dig out the first disk and pop it into a spare drive and even mount it. Not sure what the problems I had were actually caused by. On boot the devices were found and reported correctly but mke2fs wasn't going to play. I even managed to wreck one side of my first MO disk so that even fdisk refuses to play. You have been warned <g> Still I do have a ridiculously large amount of filesystem space to play with at home. Incidently, if you put a FAT f/s on a disk and leave it in the drive, then Win98 can read it, if you happen to dual-boot (pah !) Check the contents of the .diff file and the source itself - the author has been pretty thorough with documentation. Performance is not blistering but beats the heck out of a CDRW. Finally, thanks to Mr Knorr for giving me an endless file system Jon Gerdes - 17 January 2000 mailto:jon.gerdes@virgin.net
Hi, I have the ANSI SCSI-II specs. Changer devices are described here. Basically, changers are independent devices which respond to commands like: Install disk in slot 7 in drive 2 Remove disk from drive 1 and store it in slot 13 Count all disks in the slots and so on. Btw. the SCSI specs make no differences between tape changers, od jukeboxes, cd changers. These are all changer devices with the same command set. The jukebox running under HP-UX seems to work differently from the SCSI specs, where no LUNs for the slots/sides are defined. Three possibilities: 1. LUNs for the disk sides are defined in SCSI-III specifications (I don't know because I do not have them) 2. The jukebox and its driver is older than the SCSI specs, so the manufacturer had to go its own way. This is the way my jukebox works, but in my case the commands are similar. 3. The manufacturer choosed to ignore any specifications Long time ago I have tried to make my jukebox work with linux. It worked with the generic scsi driver /dev/sg*, some lines of C and a handful of shell scripts, but I did not have the time (and knowledge) to build a real kernel module from that. There is still another problem: One has to write a new filesystem type for write-once media. The ext2 filesystem can not be used because it writes superblocks all over the disk and modifies them when data is written to the disk. Sectors which have been written to are definitively lost. They can be overwritten but in fact the new data is written to spare blocks and the old data is discarded. This old data can be retrieved with special commands for optical drives. There must be some kind of "append-only filesystem" to make it really useful. Greeting Michael Heydenbluth mh@heywei.de
The PCtechGuide Home page has some excellent media history and evolving media technology information. Gene Cumm - bg18179@binghamton.edu
Optical Phase Change technology is used to create "In Phase" or "Out of Phase" bits on a special media for phase change writing. The drive uses a LASER of different power levels or LASER intensities to produce this effect. One power level allows the media to flow into a crystalline form while the other creates an "Out of Phase" condition. The crystallized areas reflect the read Lasers beam with a different coefficient of reflectivity than the non-crystallized areas. Thus, data can be read from the disk.
What makes the phase change optical disk special is that it the disk is formatted with concentric cylinders or tracks with each track being sectored much like a magnetic disk or read/write optical disk. The tracks are very close so a lot of data can be stored on a disk. This is different from a CD-ROM in that it gives your system the look and feel of a magnetic disk. CD-ROMs have a spiraling track much like a audio record. Having tracks and sectors alone would not make the phase change drive special from optical disk but the drive has some very special properties; The phase change drive allows for direct overwrite of data which magneto optical can't do inexpensively and the media has the very special property of NOT being susceptible to magnetic fields or as sensitive to static discharge which gives the media a very long shelf life.
The LF1000 is SCSI-2 compatible device. It features a block size of 512 bytes and is compatible with the Linux SCSI drivers. This drive was installed on a PC compatible AMD 100MHZ 486 with an Adaptec 1542C SCSI bus-master controller. To install and mount a disk the following steps were taken;
Your ready to "Rock'n'Roll"
Hello,
I read your article on configuring the Panasonic LF-1000 for Linux. I have configured my system so that the optical drive has its own device name and the CD-ROM has its own device name. This has allowed me to mount either media at any time. I do not require any media in the drive when I boot Linux. Also I am using the optical drive as an ext2 formatted media.
I had a couple of minor difficulties in doing so.
First, I had configured my hard drive at SCSI ID 6 and my PD at SCSI ID 4. (I wanted to have the hard drive at a higher priority that the PD). This caused a problem with the Linux SCSI driver. The driver scans the SCSI devices from the Lower SCSI id's to the higher (eg: 0 .. 6). Consequently my logical device names were assigned differently depending on which type of media was installed in the PD drive. This caused a big problem. My Linux partition is on my SCSI hard drive and the root device name would change! I corrected this problem by modifying the software in the kernel SCSI driver to scan the devices in reverse order.
Second, the distribution Linux kernel does not scan all SCSI LUNS. The PD/CD drive has a mode that establishes the CD-ROM at LUN 1 and the PD at LUN 0. This mode is selected by the configuration switches on the PD/CD drive. Switch #2 should be down (off?). If this switch is up (on?), the signature of the device is dependent upon the media that is installed and it only reports this device on LUN 0. If no media is installed I think it defaults to CD-ROM. I am using an Future Domain 16-xx SCSI interface card and the software in Linux kernel driver supports an optical device signature when scanning the LUNS. I assume that this is standard for most of the SCSI drivers. I reconfigured the kernel to enable the "scan all LUNS" switch. The kernel then assigns different device names for each device. The following is an excerpt from by boot log. You will note a series of errors in this log. This is because I did not have the optical media installed in the drive and the driver was attempting to look at the partition table to determine the block size. Fortunately it defaults to 512. I am planning on modifying the Future Domain SCSI driver to not do this when it detects the optical device.
> scsi0 <fdomain>: BIOS version 3.2 at 0xde000 using scsi id 7
> scsi0 <fdomain>: TMC-18C50 chip at 0x140 irq 12
> scsi0 : Future Domain TMC-16x0 SCSI driver, version 5.28
> scsi : 1 host.
> Vendor: CONNER Model: CP30545 545MB3.5 Rev: A9AF
> Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
> Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, id 6, lun 0
> Vendor: MATSHITA Model: PD-1 LF-1000 Rev: A109
> Type: Optical Device ANSI SCSI revision: 02
> Detected scsi disk sdb at scsi0, id 4, lun 0
> Vendor: MATSHITA Model: PD-1 LF-1000 Rev: A109
> Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
> Detected scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, id 4, lun 1
> fdomain: Selection failed
> scsi : detected 1 SCSI cdrom 2 SCSI disks total.
> SCSI Hardware sector size is 512 bytes on device sda
> fdomain: REQUEST SENSE Key = 2, Code = 3a, Qualifier = 0
> last message repeated 3 times
> sdb : READ CAPACITY failed.
> sdb : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28
> sdb : extended sense code = 2
> sdb : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
> .
> .
> .
> Partition check:
> sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
> scsidisk I/O error: dev 0810, sector 0
> unable to read partition table of device 0810
Third, I modified my file system table (/etc/fstab) to list each device but do not attempt to auto mount when booting. I have included an excerpt from my fstab. The most important options are the noauto, rw(ro), and the checkpass flag.
To create a ext2 file system on the PD, I used the command "mkfs.ext2 -i 2048 /dev/sdb".
# fstab - List of file systems
#
# device mount type options dumpfrequency
checkpass
/dev/sdb /optd ext2 rw,user,suid,noauto,sync,exec,dev,umask=0 0 2
/dev/sr0 /dist iso9660 ro,user,suid,noauto,sync,exec,dev 0 2
After making these changes, I have had no problems with mounting either media. All I need to do is to load the media and type "mount /optd" or "mount /dist" and the system does all the rest.
I hope this information is useful.
Jeff
--
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\ Jeff Rooze -- http://www.treknet.net/~jrooze -- jrooze@treknet.net /
/ If builders built buildings the way some programmers write \
\ programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy /
/ civilization. GERALD WEINBERG \
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I tried Jeff's suggestion. Here are the steps I performed;
I did try moving my primary SCSI drive to 6 but experienced some difficulties. Can't remember exactly what it was but it may have been that my controller "Adaptec 1542" with "Corel SCSI" requires a bootable disk and SCSI 0 for the BIOS install to work properly with DOS. So I switched it back and enjoyed playing with my properly install PD drive! With this configuration "workman" - the audio CD player util - works fine.
Skip's Homepage may contain a more revised copy than this HOWTO!