Partially Resolved and it revolves around stinit from the mt_st rpm: Current Status: Apparently with older 2.4 kernel based versions of SUSE, stinit was required to get my IBM ULTRIUM LTO-1 tape drive to work at all, so I had it setup appropriately, but I've managed to misplace my old stinit.def file I think. I think I upgraded my tape server from 8.2 to 9.1 and then to 10.1 (There may have been a couple more intermediaries.) (I don't remember if I did upgrades of full installs.) Somewhere along the line I ended up with a 2.6 kernel that allowed me to write new tapes and read them back in without the use of stinit and the mt_st rpm ended up not installed so I was doing so for some number of months minimum (possibly a couple years). The trouble was (is) I could not read my 8.2 vintage tapes without having stinit setup the kernel tape driver appropriately. I just installed mt_st and created a stinit.def file to go with it and I can now read the older tapes. (I used stinit.def entries I found for a Tandberg LTO drive, so they are likely not perfect for my IBM.) The trouble I'm having now is that when I read the tapes made without running stinit first, they are taking forever to read. (ie. about 70MB/hr, so to read 100 GB will take literally forever.) I would like to find a stinit.def set of values that will allow me to read both my old and new tapes. Anyone have any suggestions on what to try? Based on the Tandberg LTO info I currently am using: # IBM def per Greg Freemyer, don't know if any of this is accurate manufacturer="IBM" model="ULTRIUM-TD1" { scsi2logical=1 can-bsr=1 auto-lock=0 two-fms=0 drive-buffering=1 buffer-writes read-ahead=1 async-writes=1 can-partitions=1 fast-mteom=1 # if your stinit support timeouts timeout=180 # 3 minutes long-timeout=14400 # 4 hours # mode1 blocksize=0 compression=1 # 200 GB, native mode2 blocksize=0 compression=0 # 100GB, LTO } Also, going forward, how should I have stinit.def set to create tapes. ( This is all very confusing.) Worst case, does anyone know how to reverse the effects of stinit so I can read my more recent tapes at a reasonable speed without having to reboot? Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org