On Tue, 7 Feb 2012, Lee Duncan wrote: > Add an st module option st_nowait_eof which defaults to 0. Setting this > option to 1 tells the st driver not to wait when writing a filemark, which > can result in much faster times on streaming tape drives. > > Legacy applications cannot take advantage of the newer MTWEOFI ioctl, so this > patch gives such applications the ability to write an immediate EOF using the > normal MTWEOF ioctl if they set st_nowait_eof=1. > > Reference: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=688996 > Is there a real application? I can't open your reference. (Yes, I know that this feature can speed up writing dramatically in some cases, but is there a case with legacy applications?) Anyway, I don't think this should be implemented as a pure module option. The standard semantics specify that MTWEOF is a synchronization point and this module option breaks that for all users. The driver supports several tape device files with different properties that can be set at run-time. Why not implement this as one of the mode options? This would allow the "normal" users to use a device file with synchronizing MTWEOF and the users needing unsynchronizing MTWEOF would use another device file. The st driver exports the options in sysfs. This is important so that the users can check what the options for a device are. This new option should also be exported. Kai -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-scsi" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
