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Chapter 2 HPSS Planning
HPSS Installation Guide September 2002 75
Release 4.5, Revision 2
2.6.10.2.2 Solaris
For Solaris, the method used to enable variable block sizes for a tape device is dependent on the
type of driver used. Supported devices include Solaris SCSI Tape Driver and IBM SCSI Tape Driver.
For the IBM SCSI Tape Driver, set the block_size parameter in the /opt/IBMtape/IBMtape.conf
configuration file to 0 and perform a reboot with the reconfiguration option. The Solaris SCSI Tape
Driver has a built-in configuration table for all HPSS supported tape drives. This configuration
provides variable block size for most HPSS supported drives. In order to override the built-in
configuration, device information can be supplied in the /dev/kernel/st.conf as global properties
that apply to each node.
Consult the tape device driver documentation for instructions on installation and configuration.
2.6.10.2.3 IRIX
Variable block sizes can be enabled for the IRIX native tape device driver by configuring the Mover
to use the tape device special file with a “v” in the name (e.g. /dev/rmt/tps5d5nsvc).
2.6.10.2.4 Linux
HPSS supports tape devices on Linux with the use of the native SCSI tape device driver (st). To
enable the loading of the Linux native tape device, uncomment the following lines in the ".config"
file and follow the procedure for rebuilding your Linux kernel.
CONFIG_SCSI=y
CONFIG_CHR_DEV_ST=y
In Linux, tape device files are dynamically mapped to SCSI IDs/LUNs on your SCSI bus. The
mapping allocates devices consecutively for each LUN of each device on each SCSI bus found at
the time of the SCSI scan, beginning at the lower LUNs/IDs/buses. The tape device file will be in
this format: /dev/st[0-31]. This will be the device name to use when configuring your HPSS
device.
2.6.10.3 Disk Devices
All locally attached magnetic disk devices (e.g., SCSI, SSA) should be configured using the
pathname of the raw device (i.e., character special file).
For Linux systems, this may involve special consideration.
HPSS supports disk device on Linux with the use of the native SCSI disk device driver (sd) and the
raw device driver (raw).
The Linux SCSI Disk Driver presents disk devices to the user as device files with the following
naming convention: /dev/sd[a-h][0-8]. The first variable is a letter denoting the physical
drive, and the second is a number denoting the partition on that physical drive. Often, the partition
number, will be left off when the device corresponds to the whole drive. Drives can be partitioned
using the Linux fdisk utility.