> On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Thomas Lakofski wrote:
>
...
> > Jan 6 04:31:00 oi kernel: st: Unloaded.
> > Jan 6 04:30:01 oi kernel: st0: Can't allocate tape buffer.
> > Jan 6 04:30:01 oi kernel: st: Can't allocate new tape buffer (nbr 0).
> > Jan 6 04:30:01 oi kernel: No tape buffers allocated at initialization.
> > Jan 6 04:30:01 oi kernel: st: Can't allocate new tape buffer (nbr 0).
> > Jan 6 04:30:01 oi kernel: Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id
> > 2, lun 0
>
> Memory fragmentation. You can work around it by quitting
> Netscape or doing something else that frees up a ton of
> memory.
>
> There's no real fix for it in 2.2. We probably should
> do something about it for 2.3...
>
For SCSI tapes the fix is already there: since 2.1.121 the driver has used
scatter/gather when transferring data between the SCSI adapter and the
driver's buffer. The buffer can consist of many segments if it can't be
allocated as one chunk. (This also allows block sizes > 128 kB.)
Your statement about memory fragmentation in general is correct.
Kai
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