I've been testing IDE tape drives with e-smith and found something curious to report. I'm using a HP 20GB IDE tape drive and I've found it is recognised and works great only when it shares the secondary ide controller with a CD-ROM. If it is the only device on the secondary controller, e-smith reports 'no such device' if I enter the command 'mt -f /dev/ht0 status'. When sharing the secondary controller, either as MASTER or SLAVE, it works fine and reports the status. Of course once the tape drive is seen all tape backup commands/programs work.
So, in my newbie thinking the CD-ROM must somehow activate the secondary IDE channel which in turns makes e-smith aware of the devices on the channel.
I've tried entering 'modeprobe ide-tape' (no errors) followed by 'mt -f /dev/ht0 status' but same 'no such device' response.
I would prefer to run the tape drive as MASTER with no other device on the secondary channel. I know the tape drive works so I must be missing some key linux commands to activate it.
Anyone know the answer?
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