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4.1: Ftformat Overview

ftformat is the user-space backend that interfaces with the formatting ioctls provided by the ftape floppy tape device driver for Linux. The ioctl interface is documented elsewhere. See Formatting of cartridges using MTIOCFTFORMAT (info file ftape-4). See Sending raw commands to the tape drive (info file ftape-4).

ftformat should work with ftape-3.04d as well as with ftape-4.03. ftape-2.x does not support formatting of cartridges.

There was a major change in the interface provided by the ftape kernel driver when progressing from version 3.x to version 4.x. See Start formatting a tape track (info file ftape-4). See Start formatting a tape track (info file ftape).

Therefore, if you have an old version of ftformat installed, then you can't use it any more with ftape-4.03, but you can use the older interface supplied by ftape-3.04d with the newer version of ftformat.

You can determine the version of ftformat by running ftformat --version. This will produce the following output with the old version of ftformat:

root@anaxagoras:claus# ftformat --version
ftformat ftformat 1.0

whereas the new version supplied with this package will give the following banner:

root@anaxagoras:claus# ftformat --version
ftformat (ftape-tools) 1.08

The `ftape-tools' string indicates that it is part of the ftape-tools package (see Overview).

The Tcl/Tk interface ftape-tool (see Ftape-tool) uses ftformat as a backend for its formatting dialog.


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