mtf - a Microsoft Tape Format reader (and future writer?)
Copyright (C) 1999-2000  D. Alan Stewart, Layton Graphics, Inc.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Contact the author at:

D. Alan Stewart
Layton Graphics, Inc.
155 Woolco Dr.
Marietta, GA 30062
[email protected]


9/13/2000 - mtf version 0.2.1

Several enhancements have been added. The most significant is that mtf can now
automatically detect the block size of a tape drive. If for some reason this
does not work with your tape drive, a '-b' option allows specifying this at run
time. The '-f' switch for preserving free space has been changed to '-F'. This
option now tests for free space before writing each file instead of at directory
creation time. Slower, but more accurate. Using a pattern to selectively read
files from a tape now only creates the minimal directories required. Finally,
mtf now looks for an MTF_OPTS environment variable. This variable should be an
option string for mtf.

Usage: mtf [options] [pattern(s)]
    -v               verbose
    -V               very verbose
    -D               debug
    -l               list contents
    -b bytes         tape block size
    -d device        device to read from
    -s set           number of data set to read
    -u user          assign owner to all files/directories written
    -g group         assign group to all files/directories written
    -c [lower|upper] force the case of paths
    -o path          root path to write files to
    -F bytes[K|M]    maintain minimum free space of bytes;
                     a K or M suffix signifies kilobytes or megabytes
    pattern(s)       only read file paths that match regex pattern(s)


3/30/1999 - mtf version 0.1

WARNING! I DO NOT RECOMMEND USING THIS SOFTWARE UNLESS YOU ARE A C PROGRAMMER.
For that reason the program is provided only as C source code. It is poorly
tested as of yet - only with tapes written by one source and read by one tape
drive. At this writing it has successfully read over 150 gigabytes of data from
a series of four DLT tapes. I have not found any bugs lately, but am sure plenty
will be found as others try it.

This is the first publicly released version of mtf, a bare-bones reader for
Microsoft Tape Format tapes. Not a lot is supported at this point, but it does
everything I need it to do. This is my first effort at publicly releasing
software. It is also the first time I have manipulated a tape drive from a C
program. In particular, I do not know if it works with any drive other than my
Intergraph 40GB DLT tape drive. There may be better ways to do what I have done.
Please send any bug fixes or suggestions for improvements in the C code (other
than new features) to me. If you wish to add functionality, let me know about it
and I will try to coordinate and integrate everyone's efforts. I myself do not
have any plans for adding features to the program at this time, but I'd love to
see the Linux community develop it into a freely available, open source,
full-featured reader and writer. Even better if it also becomes a portable,
cross-platform program as pervasive as cpio or tar.

This program is based on Microsoft Tape Format Specification Version 1.00a,
Document Revision 1.8. This document is available at:

http://www.seagatesoftware.com/products/sm/library/whitepapers/downloads/mtfv1r18.zip

Usage: mtf [options] [pattern(s)]

Options:

    -v               verbose
    -V               very verbose
    -D               debug
    -l               list contents
    -d device        device to read from
    -s set           number of data set to read
    -u user          assign owner to all files/directories written;
                     useful only for the root user
    -g group         assign group to all files/directories written;
                     useful only for the root user
    -c [lower|upper] force the case of paths
    -o path          root path to write files/directories to
    -f bytes[K|M]    maintain minimum free space of bytes;
                     a K or M suffix signifies kilobytes or megabytes

Most of the options require no further explanation. The -f option is something
I have implemented to solve a problem specific to my site. Maybe some others
will find it useful also. When this option is specified mtf will test free
space available on the volume before writing a directory. If the space available
is less than the specified threshold an error message is printed and mtf goes to
sleep for one minute. It repeats this cycle until free space is greater than the
threshold. (When I use mtf, there is a coprocess that is processing directories,
archiving them to another volume, and then deleting them from the current volume
as the tape is being read. Unfortunatley, mtf reads data from my tape drive
faster than the data can be processed.)

Patterns:

POSIX basic regular expressions, case-insensitive, no substring addressing, no
newline matching as used by regcomp() and regexec().


Enjoy!