Commands sent to ATAPI tape drives via the SCSI generic (sg) driver are
limited in the amount of data that they can transfer by the max_sectors
value. The max_sectors value is currently calculated according to the
command set for disk drives, which doesn't apply to tape drives. The
default max_sectors value of 256 limits ATAPI tape drive commands to
128 KB. This patch against 2.6.24-rc1 increases the max_sectors value
for tape drives to 65535, which permits tape drive commands to transfer
just under 32 MB.
Tested with a SuperMicro PDSME motherboard, AHCI, and a Sony SDX-570V
SATA tape drive.
Note that some of the chipset drivers also set their own max_sectors
value, which may override the value set in libata-core. I don't have
any of these chipsets to test, so I didn't go messing with them. Also,
ATAPI devices other than tape drives may benefit from similar changes,
but I have only tape drives and disk drives to test.
Signed-off-by: Tony Battersby <tonyb@cybernetics.com>
Signed-off-by: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>