NAME¶
tapeinfo - report SCSI tape device info
SYNOPSIS¶
tapeinfo -f <scsi-generic-device>
DESCRIPTION¶
The
tapeinfo command reads various information from SCSI tape drives that
is not generally available via most vendors' tape drivers. It issues raw
commands directly to the tape drive, using either the operating system's SCSI
generic device ( e.g. /dev/sg0 on Linux, /dev/pass0 on FreeBSD) or the raw
SCSI I/O ioctl on a tape device on some operating systems.
One good time to use 'tapeinfo' is immediately after a tape i/o operation has
failed. On tape drives that support HP's 'tapealert' API, 'tapeinfo' will
report a more exact description of what went wrong.
Do be aware that 'tapeinfo' is not a substitute for your operating system's own
'mt' or similar tape driver control program. It is intended to supplement, not
replace, programs like 'mt' that access your operating system's tape driver in
order to report or set information.
OPTIONS¶
The first argument, given following
-f , is the SCSI generic device
corresponding to your tape drive. Consult your operating system's
documentation for more information (for example, under Linux these are
generally start at /dev/sg0 under FreeBSD these start at /dev/pass0).
Under FreeBSD, 'camcontrol devlist' will tell you what SCSI devices you have,
along with which 'pass' device controls them. Under Linux, "cat
/proc/scsi/scsi" will tell you what SCSI devices you have.
BUGS AND LIMITATIONS¶
This program has only been tested on Linux with a limited number of tape drives
(HP DDS4, Seagate AIT).
AVAILABILITY¶
tapeinfo is currently being maintained by Robert Nelson
<robertnelson@users.sourceforge.net> as part of the 'mtx' suite of
programs. The 'mtx' home page is
http://mtx.sourceforge.net and the actual
code is currently available there and via SVN from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mtx.
SEE ALSO¶
mt(1),
mtx(1),
scsitape(1),
scsieject(1),
loaderinfo(1)