Any HP-UX commands that test/initialize a DDS-3 tape for error

[Kelvin_4]

Any HP-UX commands that help test/initialize recycled DDS-3 tapes before using them for fbackup? Any commands that verify the tape is DDS-3 format in a DDS-3 tape drive. Thanks.

[G.Kumar]

Hi kevin

you can try

mt status

GK

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

mediainit should initialize your tape.

As far as I know, there is no command to find whether the tape is DDS-2 or DDS-3.

-Sri

[Jim Turner]

Hi Kelvin,

In our old fbackup scripts, we used to check for a zero return on "mt rew" to make sure a tape was in the drive.

You can also do a diskinfo on the tape device to get the rough capacity of the tape in the drive. Take the DDS-3 drive in my workstation, for instance. If I insert a 90m DDS-2 tape and run "diskinfo /dev/rmt/0m", I get:

# diskinfo /dev/rmt/0m
SCSI describe of /dev/rmt/0m:
vendor: HP
product id: C1537A
type: sequential access
size: 1161216 Kbytes
bytes per sector: 1024

After removing the 90m DDS-2 tape and inserting a 125m DDS-3 tape, the size changes:

# diskinfo /dev/rmt/0m
SCSI describe of /dev/rmt/0m:
vendor: HP
product id: C1537A
type: sequential access
size: 10833711 Kbytes
bytes per sector: 1024

It's not an exact science, but it gets you in the ballpark.

All the best,
Jim

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Kelvin,

Use man mt to see the various options available with the mt command.

use
mt status # returns status of drive
mt reten # does a retention of the cartridge
mt reset # resets the cartridge drive subsystem

There are some other options associated with the mt command. man pages will be able to help.

Have not tried to find out the DDS2/3 format of the cartridge, since it is generally written on the cartridge, but Jim's solution should work. Am out of office and so cannot give that a try myself.

Hope this helps

Thanks