mt and SCSI
I'm looking to this list for guidance. Here is the problem. Several
years ago (about 1996), Debian dropped the mt-st package, which provided
a version of mt (a utility to control magnetic tape drive operation)
with additional commands to send the ioctls specific to the Linux
SCSI tape driver. Unfortunately, the author of mt-st, Kai Makisara,
decided to base his version of mt on the Berkeley version. Since mt
is also provided by the GNU cpio package -- a version of mt with more
features than the Berkeley version -- there was a conflict between the
two versions. This was solved three years ago, when I patched the GNU
version to implement the SCSI features provided by mt-st.
In the past three years, however, Kai has improved and added new
commands to mt-st. Thus, Debian's version of mt no longer is equivalent
to mt-st's version.
What should be done? I could repatch cpio's mt to implement the new
features of mt-st, but that will be a pain in the ass. Furthermore, it
might be pointless, because the cpio package will soon become obsolete
when paxutils is released. (That is, GNU mt will be part of paxutils.)
Another easier solution is to package the new version of mt-st. This
will force Debian users to choose between two versions of mt, however,
which is what we wanted to avoid three years ago.
I welcome any suggestions.
Brian
Reply to: