Using Tape Drives

Tape Drive Device Names

On the Suns most tape drives will be named: 
 	automatic rewind	no-rewind 
	/dev/rst0		/dev/nrst0	 	 
	/dev/rst1		/dev/nrst1
On the SGI the tape drive is: 
 	automatic rewind	no-rewind 
	/dev/mt/tps0d2ns	/dev/mt/tps0d2nrns
On the IBMs the tape drives are: 
 	automatic rewind	no-rewind 
	/dev/rmt0		/dev/rmt0.1
man rmt for more information

Rewinding a Tape Drive

To rewind a tape device use the following: 
	mt -f TAPE_DEVICE rewind
where TAPE_DEVICE is the tape drive device name.

Ejecting a Tape from the Tape Drive

To eject a tape from a tape drive use the following: 
	mt -f TAPE_DEVICE offline
where TAPE_DEVICE is the tape drive device name. NOTE: This only applies to 4mm (DAT) & 8mm (exabyte) tape drives, 1/4" drives must be manually ejected.

Accessing the Tape Drive

Getting the Table of Contents

To read the table of contents of a tarred tape, issue the following command: 
tar tvf TAPE_DEVICE
where TAPE_DEVICE is the tape drive device name.

NOTE: You may need to issue the tar command multiples times if there is more than more tar file on the tape.

Getting the Data Off the Tape

To read data from the tarred tape, issue the following command: 
tar xvf TAPE_DEVICE
or, do the following if you want to extract specific files and directories: 
tar xvf TAPE_DEVICE  [filenames and/or directory names]
where TAPE_DEVICE is the tape drive device name.

Writing Data To the Tape

To write data to the tape, issue the following command: 
tar cvf TAPE_DEVICE  [filenames and/or directory names]
where TAPE_DEVICE is the tape drive device name.
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