ftmt(1)

NAME

mt - control magnetic tape drive operation

SYNOPSIS

mt [-V] [-f device] [--file=device] [--version] operation [count]

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents the GNU version of mt. mt performs the given operation, which must be one of the tape operations listed below, on a tape drive.

The default tape device to operate on is taken from the file /usr/include/sys/mtio.h when mt is compiled. It can be overridden by giving a device file name in the environment variable TAPE or by a command line option (see below), which also overrides the environment variable.

The device must be either a character special file or a remote tape drive. To use a tape drive on another machine as the archive, use a filename that starts with `HOSTNAME:'. The hostname can be preceded by a username and an `@' to access the remote tape drive as that user, if you have permission to do so (typically an entry in that user's `~/.rhosts' file).

The available operations are listed below. Unique abbreviations are accepted. Not all operations are available on all systems, or work on all types of tape drives. Some operations optionally take a repeat count, which can be given after the operation name and defaults to 1.

asf

Absolute space to file number count. Equivalent to rewind followed by fsf count.

eof, weof

Write count EOF marks at current position.

eom, seod

Space to the end of the recorded media on the tape (for appending files onto tapes).

erase

Erase the tape. Old versions of the floppy tape driver ftape required that the tape had to be erased before EOF marks could be used. Recent versions of zftape no longer have this restriction.

fsf

Forward space over count EOF marks. The tape is positioned at the end-of-the-tape side of the EOF mark.

bsf

Backward space over count EOF marks. The tape then is positioned on the end-of-the-tape side of the last skipped EOF mark, i.e. mt bsf 1 (equivalent to mt bsf ) always stays within the same tape volume and has the effect to position the tape at the beginning of the current volume.

fsfm

Forward space over count file marks. The tape is positioned on the beginning-of-the-tape side of the last skipped file mark.

bsfm

Backward space over count file marks. The tape is positioned on the beginning-of-the-tape side of the last skipped file mark.

fsr

Forward space count records.

bsr

Backward space count records.

offline, rewoffl

Rewind the tape and, if applicable, unload the tape. For the ftape floppy tape driver this has the effect of the a soft eject: the tape driver will reject all operations with the exception of a reset command until a new cartridge is inserted. A reset command has the same effect for the ftape driver as inserting a new cartridge.

ras1

Run self test 1 (non-destructive). Implemented on some QIC-02 drives.

ras2

Run self test 2 (destructive). Implemented on some QIC-02 drives.

ras3

Run self test 3 (reserved).

reset

Reset the drive in case of problems.

retension

Rewind the tape, then wind it to the end of the reel, then rewind it again.

rewind

Rewind the tape. When using the ftape floppy tape driver, one always should issue this command (or offline, rewoffl ) before removing a cartridge, because ftape caches information that has to be stored in the header segments of a floppy tape cartridge.

seek

Seek to the count th block of the tape (absolute from BOT, Tandberg tape drives, relative to the current file resp. volume for zftape QIC-117 floppy tape driver)

setblk

Set the length of a tape block to count bytes (SCSI tapes and zftape-driver for QIC-117 floppy-tapes). A value of 0 means to select variable block size mode.

getblk

Get the length of tape blocks (zftape-driver for QIC-117 floppy-tapes) in bytes.

setdensity

Set the tape density according to count for SCSI tapes. For the zftape version of the ftape floppy tape driver for Linux, this has the special meaning to set the trace level that specifies the amount of debugging output printed to the system log files.

setdrvbuffer

Set the drive buffering according to SCSI-2. For zftape this has the special meaning to set the number of 32kb dma buffers the driver uses.

status

Print status information about the tape unit. Usually this results in sending an MTNOP MTIOCTOP command to the tape drive followed by a MTSTATUS command. This version of mt also sends a MTIOCVOLINFO ioctl to get information about the current volume and a MTIOCGETSIZE command to query the capacity of the inserted tape catridge. These two are special ioctls supported by the zftape floppy tape device driver for Linux.

tell

Tell the current block-number (zftape QIC-117 driver, Tandberg tapedrives, for zftape relative to the current file resp. volume).

getseg

Read an arbitrary segment, including the header segments, of a floppy tape drive (zftape QIC-117 floppy tape driver). This results in up to 29kb of data written to stdout (don't forget to redirect stdout to a file).

getsize

Query the tape capacity of the tape cartridge (zftape QIC-117 floppy tape driver). This results in printing the total data capacity, the used data capacity and the remaining data capacity.

mt exits with a status of 0 if the operation succeeded, 1 if the operation or device name given was invalid, or 2 if the operation failed.