On Thursday 19 June 2003 11:57, Tom Brown wrote:
>> ISTR you saying this is Linux?  If so, then 'mt compression 0'
>> should do it.  You can check the status by pointing 'tapeinfo'
>> (from the mtx distribution) at the generic device associated with
>> your tape drive.
>
>It is linux yes - will amanda use this command before writing to
> this device when amanda runs normally? How can one be sure that the
> hardware compression is permanently off?
>
>Tom

Many drives have an led tally on the front to indicate when the 
comnpressor is active.

And no, amanda will not use it, and in fact cannot because once a lock 
on the drive is obtained, its not released until done.  Turning it 
off is best done via the dip switch or jumper settings programming of 
the drive.

However, be aware that a tape written to with it on, will override the 
drives settings until such time as a block 1 write is forced and 
flushed to the media with the compression turned off.  And drives 
even vary in that behaviour from production runto production run.  I 
now have in service some tapes that were originally compressed, and a 
slightly earlier version of the ctl-96 Seagate drive than the one I 
started with, and even though the tape labels have been re-written 
with compression off, the led is on *until* a real data write starts.
Those tapes didn't show that little foible until I had to replace the 
drive with a near identical one.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
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Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.