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System Administration Guide, Volume 1

How to Display Tape Drive Status

  1. Load a tape into the drive you want information about.

  2. Display tape drive status with the mt command.


    # mt -f /dev/rmt/n status

  3. Repeat steps 1-2, substituting tape drive numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on to display information about all available tape drives.

Example-- Displaying Tape Drive Status

The following example shows status for a QIC-150 tape drive (/dev/rmt/0) and an Exabyte tape drive (/dev/rmt/1).


$ mt -f /dev/rmt/0 status
Archive QIC-150 tape drive:
   sense key(0x0)= No Additional Sense   residual= 0   retries= 0
   file no= 0   block no= 0
$ mt -f /dev/rmt/1 status
Exabyte EXB-8200 8mm tape drive:
sense key(0x0)= NO Additional Sense residual= 0  retries= 0
file no= 0   block no= 0

The following example shows a quick way to poll a system and locate all of its tape drives. 


$ for drive in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
> do
> mt -f /dev/rmt/$drive status
> done
Archive QIC-150 tape drive:
   sense key(0x0)= No Additional Sense   residual= 0   retries= 0
   file no= 0   block no= 0
/dev/rmt/1: No such file or directory
/dev/rmt/2: No such file or directory
/dev/rmt/3: No such file or directory
/dev/rmt/4: No such file or directory
/dev/rmt/5: No such file or directory
/dev/rmt/6: No such file or directory
/dev/rmt/7: No such file or directory
$