Contradicting the answer to Re: Answering my own question Re: Iomega REV drive, FreeBSD 4.11

[Tom Russo]

On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 10:21:55AM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> I'm answering my own question on the mailing list, just to get what I found
> into the archives in case anyone else has this question.
> 
> On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 08:33:47PM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> > I'm running FreeBSD 4.11.  I last updated from STABLE in January:
> > 
> > FreeBSD bogodyn.org 4.11-STABLE FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE #0: Sat Jan 22 13:10:32 MST 2005     russo at bogodyn.org:/users2/obj/usr/src/sys/BOGODYN  i386
> > 
> > I just purchased an external SCSI Iomga REV 35MB removable medium drive.  
> > 
> [...]
> > When I attach the device and camcontrol rescan all, I get this in the 
> > /var/log/messages:
> > 
> > Jul 21 19:22:52 bogodyn /kernel: cd1: <Iomega RRD 84.B> Removable CD-ROM SCSI-4 
> > device 
> [...]
> > That is, the drive is detected, but as a removable CDROM, 
> 
> This is not peculiar to BSD.  Low-level SCSI utilities in the SCSI controller
> at boot time also fail to recognize this thing as a disk drive, and even 
> on Windows it shows up as a CD-ROM.  The only way to write data to it is to
> use a windows-only driver.  And since it doesn't use an ISO-9660 file system,
> the only way to read data off of it is with a windows-only driver, too.  So
> the thing is a paperweight unless one is using Windows.  One can use 
> the windows explorer to copy files into it, and one could use it to back up
> files if they're on a BSD machine shared by Samba.  Useless for system recovery,
> but perhaps barely functional as a data backup.  
> 
> Live and learn.

I just received a note from a member of the amanda-users mailing list, 
contradicting what I wrote above several weeks ago.  Apparently the Iomega REV 
drive uses a UDF filesystem and functions as a DVD-RAM at the system level, even
though it probes as a CD-ROM drive.  This person has been using one as a 
backup device on a SuSE Linux box for a while.  

Since posting the original query I finally upgraded to FreeBSD 5.4.
Unfortunately, to use it one requires read/write access to UDF filesystems, 
and BSD 5.4 has only read-only support for UDF.  

So to amend my earlier report of the uselessness of the Iomega REV drive:
 FreeBSD 4.11 can't use it because it lacks UDF support
 FreeBSD 5.x might be able to read them
 It would be possible, were there read/write support for UDF, to use the thing
 It is not limited to Windows, one needs only read/write UDF support.

Which leads to a final question:  Is there any work being done on read/write
support for UDF filesystems?  Might 6.0 get this capability?

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY     SAR502  DM64ux         http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 
 "The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly
  worth the effort." -- Norton Juster