Determining Tape Drive Types

You can use the status option with the mt command to get status information about the Xylogics 472 1/2-inch tape drive and the Exabyte EXB-8200 8-mm tape drive.

The mt command also reports information about these 1/4-inch tape drives:

• Xylogics 472

• Exabyte EXB-8200

• Sysgen (QIC-24)

• Emulex MT-02 (QIC-24)

• Archive QIC-150

• Wangtek QIC-150

How to Determine the Type of a Tape Drive

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

2. Display tape drive information 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--Determining the Type of a Tape Drive

This 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

Here is an quick way to poll a system and locate all tape drives. In this example, the tape drive is at 0.

$ 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
$ 

How to Show the Status of a Magnetic Tape Drive

To display tape drive status information, use the mt command.

$ mt -f /dev/rmt/n status

Status for the tape drive you specify is displayed.

Examples--Showing the Status of a Magnetic Tape Drive

In the following example, there is no tape in drive /dev/rmt/1.

$ mt -f /dev/rmt/1 status
/dev/rmt/1: no tape loaded or drive offline
$

In this example, the status is shown for the tape in drive /dev/rmt/1.

$ mt -f /dev/rmt/1 status
Archive QIC-150 tape drive:
   sense key(0x6)= unit attention   residual= 0   retries= 0
   file no= 0   block no= 0
$