SKID ROW presents TAPE WORM-FS USER'S GUIDE INTRODUCTION Congratulations on your purchase of TapeWorm-FS for your Amiga computer! TapeWorm-FS is fully-functional filesystem for SCSI tape drives. By using TapeWorm-FS you may access your tape drive just as you would any other AmigaDOS volume. That means that you can get directories, add and delete files, copy files, and perform all file management operations as if you were using a floppy or hard disk drive. Note: Since through TapeWorm-FS your tape drive functions as a Write Once Read Many (WORM) drive, all data copied to the drive remains on the tape even if you delete files. See the section on Using TapeWorm-FS for more information. System Requirements TapeWorm-FS will work on any Amiga computer (or Video Toaster Workstation) operating under Workbench 2.x or above with a SCSI tape drive (DAT, 8mm, or QIC format). There are no minimum memory requirements. Drives that support the SCSI II fast search mode are recommended for superior performance. Installation The TapeWorm-FS disk is not copy protected in any way so you may make one archival copy in order to protect your investment. To install Tape-Worm-FS onto your hard drive, follow these steps: Step 1: Immediately make a backup copy of your TapeWorm-FS original disk, and store it in a safe place. Step 2: Insert the copy of the TapeWorm-FS disk into a floppy drive, and open the disk by double-clicking on its icon from Workbench. Step 3: Once the disk contents are displayed on your screen, you will see an icon named "Install TapeWorm-FS". This is the installation program that will place the TapeWorm-FS files into the proper locations. Double click on this icon to execute the installation program. Step 4: The TapeWorm-FS Installation Program window will appear on your screen. You must Set Installation Mode by selecting the Intermediate User or Expert User gadget. The Expert User mode will allow you to control the installation process at every step, letting you decide exactly where you wish each file to be installed. Click on the Proceed With Install gadget to continue or the Abort Install gadget to end the process. TapeWorm-FS is now installed on your system. You must now set your system-configuration. See the section on Configuring TapeWorm-FS. If you do not wish to use the installation program to install TapeWorm-FS, you may perform a manual installation by following these steps: Step 1a: If your system is operation under AmigaDOS 2.1 or later, copy the file 'Tape' from the TapeWorm-FS disk to your system's 'Devs:DosDrivers' directory. Step 1b: If your system is operating under AmigaDOS 2.0, append the contents of 'TW.Mountlist' file to your system's 'Devs:MountList' file and add the command 'Mount TAPE:' to your system's 'S:User-Startup' file. Step 2: Copy the file 'TapeWorm-FS' to your system's 'L:' directory. If a previous version of TapeWorm-FS is already installed on your system, and you wish to update the version you are using, perform these steps: Step 1: Copy the file 'TapeWorm-FS' from the disk to your system's 'L:' directory. Step 2: Copy the TWConfig and TWCtrl files to the directory of your choice. TapeWorm-FS is now installed on your system. Now you must configure your drive for operation on your system and set the TapeWorm-FS options. The TapeWorm-FS Utilities ------------------------- TW Config Before you can use TapeWorm-FS, you must properly configure the TW.config file to reflect your system configuration. You may do so by using the TWConfig utility which was placed in the location on your hard drive that you specified during the installation procedure. Start the TWConfig program from Workbench or CLI, and the TWConfig screen will appear. From this screen you will be able to: Configure Drive Set Options Format Recover Configure Drive Click on the Configure Drive gadget to configure your drive for use under TapeWorm-FS. Device Under the Device requester, you will be able to select the device driver for your SCSI controller. (For example, if your computer is the Amiga 3000, you would select "scsi.device" for Commodore's SCSI controller.) Unit You must select the Unit number for the SCSI tape device you wish to use under TapeWorm-FS. Blocksize Specify the block size for your tape drive by clicking on this cycle gadget. It is recommended that you leave the blocksize at 512 bytes for all drives except Exabyte 8mm drives, which should have a blocksize of 1024 bytes. TapeSize Enter the approximate size of the tape being used in this gadget (this allows the TapeWorm-FS to calculate percentage of tape full when displaying information about the tape device). When you have configured the drive, click on Save gadget. Click on the Cancel gadget of you do not wish to save the current configuration. Note that most of these options only take effect when TapeWorm-FS is started. You must reboot or kill (see the TWControl section) and restart the filesystem for the changes to take effect. Set Options There are several options you may select for the operation of TapeWorm-FS. Click on the Set Options gadget on the TWConfig main screen. Buffer Reads Files are copied to your Buffer Path (see the next page for an explanation of the Buffer Path) when they are opened. The system then reads from the files that are in your Buffer Path. This feature is only really useful if the program you are using repeatedly seeks throughout the file. For example, most 'LHARC' programs seek back and forth when extracting files. Buffer Writes Files are written to your Buffer Path and copied to tape when the file is closed. This is necessary for programs that seek around in a file as they are writing. Most programs that write IFF files seek back to the beginning of the file after they are done writing, so this option is very useful. Also, this option allows multiple files to be written to the tape simultaneously, which is not normally possible, due to the inherent limitations of tape drives. Keep Directory on Tape If your tape drive supports partitioning, selecting this option will let TapeWorm-FS keep the directory of the tape on the tape itself. The directory will be kept in your directory path only when the tape is in the drive. When you have selected this option, you must use the TWControl program to eject the tape, since TapeWorm-FS needs to update the directory on the tape to reflect the temporary directory that is on the hard disk. TapeWorm-FS will lock the tape in the drive (on drives that support this feature) so that the tape may not be ejected manually. If your system crashes or otherwise fails before the temporary directory is written to the tape, the temporary directory will be updated the next time you insert the tape. Unlike the other available options, this option takes effect when you format a tape and remains in effect for that tape. Existing Files Are Read Only This is the normal mode of operation for TapeWorm-FS. Files can be read or overwritten, but they cannot be opened and subsequently written to. If both the Buffer Reads and Buffer Writes are enabled, you can turn off this option so that files may be updated in place. Keep '.info' Files With Directory By default, '.info' files are kept on tape just as other files. However, this results in slow Workbench performance as it must seek around the tape to load files. Selecting this option directs TapeWorm-FS to keep '.info' files as part of the directory file. Directory Path This is where you specify the location in which you wish TapeWorm-FS to store the device directories. The default path is your system's 'S:' directory. Buffer Path If you have selected Buffer Reads or Buffer Writes, this is the location in which TapeWorm-FS will maintain the buffer. The default path is in your system's RAM device. The buffer is used to store files for reading and writing (when Buffer Reads or Buffer Writes is selected) so that these operations will be performed more quickly than if the reads and writes were from the tape directly. When you have set the options you desire, click on the Save gadget. Click on the Cancel gadget if you do not wish to save the current configuration. Format Before accessing your tape drive through TapeWorm-FS, you must insert a tape into your drive and format the tape. Insert the tape you wish to format into the tape drive. To format the tape, click on the Format gadget on the TWConfig main screen. A requester will appear that asks you to Enter volume name you wish to give to the tape. Type the name into this requester and click on the Continue gadget. TapeWorm-FS will now format your tape. If you wish to exit without formatting a tape, click on the Abort gadget. WARNING: You must only format the tape before using it for the first time. If you format the tape again, any data that may have been previously written to the tape will be lost. Recover Should your tape directory become unavailable to you. TapeWorm-FS allows you to rebuild a directory file from the information on a tape. Insert the tape for which you wish to have a directory rebuilt, then click on this gadget on the TWConfig main screen. TWCtrol The TWCtrl utility has the following four options (they can also be invoked from the CLI using the template "TWCtrl ): Inhibit Un-Inhibit Kill Eject Inhibit Selecting this option prevents the filesystem from accessing the tape drive. This allows you to make use of other programs that access the tape drive, such as backup utilities (i.e., Ami-Back). Un-Inhibit Selecting this option allows the filesystem to access the tape drive after it has been inhibited. Kill This option causes the filesystem to exit. This is useful if you want the filesystem to be restarted in order to load a new configuration or if you are done using the current configuration. This will only take affect if there are no outstanding locks on the filesystem (e.g., there are no assigns to the filesystem, you aren't CD'd to it, and there is no volume in the drive). Eject The option causes the tape in the drive to be ejected (on drives that support eject). If the tape was formatted with the "Keep Directory on Tape" option, the directory on the tape will be updated. Using TapeWorm-FS TapeWorm-FS allows you to access files on your tape device in the same way as you would any other AmigaDOS device. The commands such as dir, copy, list, delete, etc. work transparently on a device accessed through TapeWorm-FS. However, since data cannot actually be deleted from within a tape (data can only be appended to a tape without writing over the existing data), TapeWorm-FS causes your tape device to function as a Write Once Read Many (WORM) drive. This means that every file ever written to the device remains on the device, even if you delete the file. When you use the delete command on a file that is located on a TapeWorm- FS device, the directory file that is maintained for the device is updated so that the filename will no longer appear by using the standard AmigaDOS and Workbench commands. However, you can still access overwritten or deleted files from the CLI by using the special character "@" with a directory or filename. Type "file@" to obtain the version of file. Versions start at 1 and go up. The latest version of a file does not have a version number. Type "dir@" in order to have deleted or overwritten files show up in the directory listing using the "file@" notation. Type "dir@" in order to display only files less than or equal to in the directory listing. This also uses the "file@" notation. Theory of Operation TapeWorm-FS is an AmigaDOS filesystem handler. A handler acts as an interface which allows AmigaDOS to access a piece of hardware. For example, 'SER:' allows access to the Amiga's serial port. A filesystem handler not only allows access to a storage device, but it maintains information on the device about files and directories as well. Unlike a hard drive, a streaming tape drive does not allow any arbitrary block on the tape to be read or written. Data can only be written by being appended to the end of the tape. Also, the tape must be positioned to read an arbitrary block. Positioning the tape requires much more than the corresponding hard disk operation. Due to these limitations, TapeWorm-FS does not keep directory and file information on the tape itself as FastFileSystem or other hard disk filesystems would. TapeWorm-FS maintains the directory information in a file on your hard disk, and it uses the tape only for storing the actual file data (as well as recovery information). Performance Once your directory files become large you will notice a slow-down when performing directory operations. This is due to the way AmigaDOS performs seeks within large files. We recommend adding buffers (using the AmigaDOS command AddBuffers) to the drive on which your "Directory Path" is located. As a rule of thumb, add one buffer for every 36k in size of the largest directory file. The Buffer Reads and Buffer Writes options can greatly increase performance for programs that seek around in a file, or perform lots of little reads and writes. A RAM directory is the best place to set your Buffer Path except when you have files that are larger than the amount of free RAM available on your system. Note: The most efficient way to use a tape drive is to read files off in the same order they were put on. This eliminates seek time, since after reading a file the tape is immediately positioned to read the next file. Appendix I: TW.Config File Format DEVICE = UNIT = BLOCKSIZE = TAPESIZE = DIRPATH = FASTLOCATE = DEBUG = BUFFPATH = BUFFERREADS = BUFFERWRITES = DRIVE = SUPP_PARTITION = MAXBLOCKSIZE = PARTITION = READONLY = INFOWITHDIR = USE24BITDMA = The following is an example TW.Config file: DEVICE = scsi.device UNIT = 4 BLOCKSIZE = 512 TAPESIZE = 1300 DIRPATH = SYS:S/ FASTLOCATE = TRUE DEBUG = SYS:debug/ BUFFPATH = RAM: BUFFERREADS = TRUE BUFFERWRITES = TRUE DRIVE = ARCHIVE Python SUPP_PARTITION = TRUE MAXBLOCKSIZE = 16777215 PARTITION = TRUE READONLY = FALSE INFOWITHDIR = TRUE USE24BITDMA = FALSE Appendix II: Compatible Tape Drives The following is a partial list of the drives which are compatible with TapeWorm-FS. Archive Python DAT drive Archive Sidewinder 250 Archive Viper 2525s Commodore 3070 Exabyte 8mm Hewlet Packard DAT drive Sony DAT drive Tandberg 3640 Teac MT-2ST Wangtek 5125 Wangtek 5150es Wangtek 5525es Wangtek 6200 DAT Wangtek SCSI-36 Xybyte 8mm (2.3 gigabytes) If you are able to use TapeWorm-FS successfully with a tape drive not listed about, please contact us so that we may include the drive name in the next manual revision. SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW