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IDE Tape Backup

Linux expects to use a SCSI based tape system. The kernel will recognize many IDE tape drives, but most of the backup software seems to require SCSI based drives.

The solution to this dillema, is not to ditch your IDE drive and buy a SCSI drive, but to set up your IDE drive to emulate the SCSI drive. I found that this was not documented in the library of books I have on Linux, but it is very easy to achieve on Linux 7.0 by following the steps listed:

1. Watch the startup screen as the computer is booted and you will see the Tape drive being detected and note the device allocated to it by the kernel. In my case, the tape drive was identified as a Seagate and allocated to "HDD" The IDE Hard disk was HDA and the CDROM drive HDC.

2. Modify the lilo.conf file which is in the /etc/ directory by adding the line of text : append="hdd=ide-scsi" If your tape drive is other than HDD, then use the appropriate entry in /etc/lilo.conf
i.e. if your tape drive was HDE then add append="hde=ide-scsi"

3. Run Lilo to recognise the change to lilo.conf (with RH7.0, you do not need to run lilo, but there is no harm in doing so to ensure that the cahnges are recognised.)

4. Modify the rc.local file located in the /etc/rc.d/ directory to include the line modprobe ide-scsi
This ensure that the IDE-SCSI emulation module is loaded and running. (You can manually load the module from the command line and you will see the tape drive listed as a scsi device. (Linux must be restarted with the changes to lilo.conf before the IDE-SCSI emulator will find the tape drive).

5. The tape drive will now apear as /dev/nst0 You could create a link to /dev/tape if you wish. This may be necessary for some software.

6. Restart Linux and the tape should now operate as a SCSI device.
This can be tested using the command : mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind - The tape should respond and rewind.

I found that Arkeia 4.2 works well with my Seagate TR5 tape drive.

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
linear
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22
label=linux
read-only
root=/dev/hda1
append="hdd=ide-scsi"

#!/bin/sh
#
# This script will.....................

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fi
# setup ide scsi emulation to start at boot .up
modprobe ide-scsi