Solaris : Controlling tape device/drive using mt command

by nixCraft on March 22, 2005 · 4 comments· Last updated March 22, 2005

1) Rewinding a tape
# mt –f /dev/rmt/0 rewind

2) Display the status of a tape drive
# mt –f /dev/rmt/0 status
It displays information as tape is loaded, offline, total files, blocks etc.

3) Retensioning a tape
# mt –f /dev/rmt/0 retension

You should follow me on twitter here or grab rss feed to keep track of new changes.

Featured Articles:

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Divakar April 17, 2008 at 11:56 pm

Hi,

Is there any commnad to find – how many tapes in a tape drive.

Regards
Divakar

2 Deepadevi June 1, 2010 at 1:09 pm: using tools we can identify the no of free tapes are available in drive.
Reply

3 Mahmoud December 19, 2010 at 12:46 pm

I want to configure a Dell RD1000 tape drive on
solaris10 server and I do the following:

1-First I found the drive name by using command:
#iostat -En
and this is the output:

c2t0d0 Soft Errors: 1 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor: DELL Product: RD1000 Revision: 0053 Serial No:
Size: 0.00GB
Media Error: 0 Device Not Ready: 0 No Device: 0 Recoverable: 0
Illegal Request: 1 Predictive Failure Analysis: 0

2-I try the mt command on this device as follow:

#mt -f /dev/dsk/c2t0d0 and the output is :No such device

when I try #mt -f /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 the output is :Device is busy

3-I try to check which process has locked the Tape drive by using:

# fuser -u /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 I found the process is “Vold”

4-I stop the volume management process by using:

# /etc/init.d/volmgt stop

and i checked again:

# mt -f /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 status

mt: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Notes: I used “tapes” command and still “/dev/rmt” empty

Any respond ASAP will be really appreciated.
You can respond me on my e-mail: m_aboelgheit@yahoo.com

4 Vilas A February 8, 2013 at 10:30 pm

When you insert the tape in the tape drive and execute the below command, output should be like as shown below or else reboot the system using reconfiguration option..

# reboot -- -r

# touch /reconfigure
# init 6
# iostat -En

Outputs:

c0t0d0          Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor: IBM      Product: DDRS34560SUN4.2G Revision: S98E Serial No: 2V4549
Size: 4.29GB
Media Error: 0 Device Not Ready: 0 No Device: 0 Recoverable: 0
Illegal Request: 0 Predictive Failure Analysis: 0
c0t1d0          Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor: IBM      Product: DDRS34560SUN4.2G Revision: S98E Serial No: 369317
Size: 4.29GB
Media Error: 0 Device Not Ready: 0 No Device: 0 Recoverable: 0
Illegal Request: 0 Predictive Failure Analysis: 0
c0t6d0          Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor: Compaq   Product: 12X CD-ROM DRV   Revision: 3136 Serial No: 11/08
                                                                          9
Size: 18446744073.71GB
Media Error: 0 Device Not Ready: 0 No Device: 0 Recoverable: 0
Illegal Request: 0 Predictive Failure Analysis: 0
rmt/2           Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor: EXABYTE  Product: EXB-8505SMBANSH2 Revision: 0098 Serial No: