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8.8: The ioctl interface to ftape

So called ioctl's are special IO-commands that can be send to a file via the ioctl system call (see man 2 ioctl). A device driver can supply arbitrary IO operations via its ioctl interface. However, most commonly ioctls are used to perform special task that aren't related to writing or reading (e.g. see MTIOCTOP) or to modify the behaviour of a device driver by setting specific options (e.g. see MTSETBLK).

This section describes which ioctls are available with ftape. The ioctl definitions can be found in the file `[/usr/src/linux/]mtio.h' or in ftape's own version of this file [/usr/src/ftape-4.03/]/include/linux/mtio.h.

MTIOCTOP The tape operation wrapper ioctl
MTIOCGET Query the tape status
MTIOCPOS Query the tape position
MTIOCRDFTSEG and MTIOCWRFTSEG Read and write floppy tape segments
MTIOCVOLINFO Query info about the current volume (ftape-3.04d (and later versions))
MTIOCGETSIZE Query the size of the cartridge (ftape-3.04d (and later versions))
MTIOCFTFORMAT Format a floppy tape cartridge (ftape-3.04d (and later versions))
MTIOCFTCMD Send raw QIC-117 commands to the tape drive

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