The Ftape Installation and Usage Guide - MTIOCFTFORMAT
FTFMT_STATUS
-- monitor formatting a tape track
This operation is needed to synchronise the user level formatting
program with the kernel level device driver while formatting a tape
track. It simply returns the number of the segment that just has been
formatted. But as a side effect the kernel driver updates the DMA
buffers with new sector coordinates and performs the DMA buffer
flipping. Note that depending on the number of segments per tape track
it might be the case that the coordinates for an entire tape track
doesn't fit into the DMA buffers all at once. In this case, the
FTFMT_STATUS
operation uses the regions of the DMA buffers which
already have been written to the FDC to store the coordinates for the
remaining segments that didn't fit into the DMA buffers when they were
filled the first time as a side effect of the FTFMT_FORMAT_TRACK
operation.
The FTFMT_STATUS
operation is also nice for monitoring the
progress the driver makes in formatting a tape track.
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