Harri Haataja on Fri 24/01 12:31 +0200:
> > Hardware depends on the os in use.  Some os's have a choice of
> > compressed or uncompressed drives in the device list and will turn
> > the drives compression on and off according to the devicename you
> > used to address it.  Linux does not however, so one must find the
> > switch setting on the drive itself that turns this on/off.
> 
> I use this in my /etc/modules.conf on Linux: post-install st mt
> datcomp off
> 
> Which uses mt to switch off compression every time the module loader
> autoloads the scsi tape driver.

Isn't this what `stinit' is for? This associates the device files with
arbitrary modes in the driver.  It just doesn't hardcode them in the
device file name, but lets you associate it at runtime (usually at boot
time).