How to Display Tape Drive Status

1. Ensure that tapes are loaded into the drives.
2. For every tape whose status you want to check, type the following command:

   # mt -f /dev/rmt/drive-number status

The following example shows the status for a QIC-150 tape drive (/dev/rmt/0):

$ 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

The following example shows the status for an Exabyte tape drive (/dev/rmt/1):

$ 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
$