The Ftape Installation and Usage Guide - ftape-2x compatibility
MTBSF and EOD semantics
ftape-3.04d (and later versions) allow read access to ftape-2.x created backups and also
provides full file-mark support: one still can use the MTFSF,
MTBSF and related tape operations. See MTFSF, see MTBSF.
However, ftape-2.x handled the MTBSF command wrongly:
MTBSF with count `1' backspaced to the previous volume, but
it should not, IMHO. The correct behaviour (or to express it a little
more carefully: the behaviour implemented in ftape-3.04d (and later versions)) is described
in the MTBSF section of this manual. See MTBSF.
The handling of the the EOD (End Of Data) mark might also have
changed slightly (not sure, FIXME). The current implementation returns a
zero byte count for two consecutive reads when EOD is reached. If
the program trying to read from the tape drive places additional
consecutive read requests, then an IO error (error code -EIO) is
the result.
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