topic Re: Tape Backup in Operating System - HP-UX

Tape Backup

HECTOR COLUNGA — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 15:41:57 GMT

How can I verify what the status of my tape is? (is it online)

Re: Tape Backup

Patrick Wallek — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 15:46:32 GMT

There are things you can with the 'mt' comand. 'mt -f /dev/rmt/?mn status' will show the status of the tape drive.

Re: Tape Backup

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 15:50:05 GMT

mt -f /dev/rmt/0m status

will display the status of your tape and if a tape is mounted in the drive.

Man 1 mt for details.

Of course, this will tell you nothing about the actual backup itself. You would have to read the tape back for that.

Re: Tape Backup

HECTOR COLUNGA — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 15:59:20 GMT

These were the results; what do they mean?

Archive Python 4mm Helical Scan tape drive:
sense key(0x0)= No Additional Sense residual= 0 retries= 0
file no= 0 block no= 0

Re: Tape Backup

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 16:15:41 GMT

The exact output varies from tape model to tape model but here is a typical DDS (DAT) drive with a tape mounted:

# mt -f /dev/rmt/2m status
Drive: HP C1537A
Format: DDS-1 format
Status: [41111300] BOT online compression immediate-report-mode
File: 0
Block: 0

And here is the same drive but empty:

# mt -f /dev/rmt/2m status
Drive: HP C1537A
Format:
Status: [0]
File: 0
Block: 0

In both cases mt returned a zero exit code meaning success but the most important line is the "Status: " line. If you see [0] it indicates that the drive can be detected but that it is empty.