4. Problems in backup and restore

4.1 I keep on getting the error message Device or resource busy while trying to open backup device.

• Make sure that another user is not using the tape drive.
• Make sure that no processes that use the tape drive are running in the background.
• If you are using a floppy controller, make sure that there are no floppy drives mounted.
• This error may also be caused by insufficient unfragmented memory below 16MB on PC Linux systems. In this case, the ftape module could not allocate a DMA buffer. This also affects the floppy module.

4.2 I get a No such device error when trying to backup or restore.

You have not enabled support for your tape drive. If you have a SCSI tape drive, make sure your kernel was compiled with support for CSI devices, support for SCSI tape drives, and support for your interface card, enabled. Also make sure that you have edited the Makefile and removed the '#' in the line '#DEFINES=-DHAVE_SCSI' and then re-compile and re-install.

Also, if you have a SCSI drive, make sure that it is turned on when you boot Linux. If it isn't turned on when you boot, Linux won't register its presence, and even if you turn it on after, it may still not work.

If you have a floppy tape drive, make sure you have ftape, and you have installed it with "insmod ftape.o".

4.3 Why does taper say Rewinding tape for a flash and then before it starts to read, takes a long time to start actually read.

This is the way the ftape/zftape driver works. When taper (or anyone) does a request for the tape to be rewound or fast forwarded, it doesn't actually move the tape at that point - it just remembers that the tape needs to be rewound/fast forwarded. When a read/write command is given, then the tape is actually moved. So, when taper issues a rewind, the driver instantly returns to taper, but then when taper issues a read, then the tape is positioned - hence it looks like it is taking a long time to read. This is why "Rewinding tape" only stays for a second, but before the read can begin, the tape has to be physically moved.

4.4 Why does taper say Tape drive type has not been set when started

You must tell taper what type of tape drive you have. There are several types taper supports. You start taper like

   taper -T SCSI    (taper -T s) or   
   taper -T ftape   (taper -T f) or 
   taper -T zftape  (taper -T z) or
   taper -T removable  (taper -T r) or
   taper -T file (taper -T l) or
   taper -T ide  (taper -T i)

depending on what type of tape drive you have. You can then save this to a preference file using the menu option so you don't have to start taper like this again. Note that you can use the shortened version shown in brackets.

Alternatively, you can set the environment variable, TAPE_TYPE to scsi, zftape, removable, ide, file or ftape.