[rescue] OT: can a tape device be mounted?

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Tue, May 21, 2002 at 12:01:08PM -0400, George Adkins wrote:
>I just had a thought, could a DLT Drive be conveniently mounted and used to 
>store-retrieve large files directly?  i.e. without spooling them to hard disk?
> 
>The reason I ask, is the idea of storing digital video on them, much like the 
>idea of the DAT tape...  (How many feature length MPEG movies could you store 
>on a 30 or 40 gig DLT?)

If you tar directly to the tape, then all you need is the index from the tar
to find the starting location, then you should be table to stream from there.

So, say you put did:
tar cv /dev/tape 1.mpg 2.mpg 3.mpg

Then you should be able to do:
tar o /dev/tape 1.mpg | gtv

Note, I don't remeber if gtv was the program that supports playing back mpeg
from stdin, but there is a program, and it works well enough on irix when
I was using it to play video from stdin.

I tried to play with this, but I was foiled by purchasing 3 bad DAT drives
in a row.  My tests that used tar files on the harddrive worked well enough
though.  I seem to remeber hearing that some drives didn't really allow
random access, but for playback purposes, this can be bypassed by reading
the index, then completely rewinding the tape, and using the index to get
what you need while only moving forward.  But, if you have to do that, it is
no longer a simple solution.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd