About the tape drive

[juno2]

I have insert a tape into the drive previously , now it can't be eject by " mt offl" , it pop up it is offline, then i try to list out the file content "tar -tvf /dev/rmt/0m " , then pop up no tape in the media, how to solve it ? thx very much.

[juno2]

the error "no tape in the media " should be " No medium found " , can suggest how to solve ? is the drive power off ? thx.

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

When you offline a tape it doesnt really eject it, just unload it. Then someone can use the handle on the tape to eject it manually. Once a tape is offlined you cannot to any HP-UX commands on it - all will fail (you cant tar or dd or mt or anything) until someone manually removes the tape, then reloads it by reinserting it.

Any error like "no tape in media" or "device if offline" or "I/O error" means the tape is not loaded - its has been unloaded and now someone was manually remove it and insert a tape.

[Uday_S_Ankolekar]

what does mt -t /dev name status shows?

for example if your tape drive is /dev/rmt/0mn then

mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn status
This should give you the status of the drive even if there is no tape inside the drive.

you can check the tape device is claimed or not by ioscan

run ioscan -fnC tape to get the device name

-USA..

[juno2]

thx all, I can't remove it by manually eject the tape now.

[Shannon Petry]

What kind of tape drive is it? My guess is a 4mm or 8mm single tape drive?

Try to power off the tape drive, then power it back on.

I have had tapes get stuck before for several reasons. Namely hung processes reading/writing, but it could be a bad tape as well. You may want to reboot the system as well as power off and on the tape drive.

Use the following after the tape drive has been powered off/on, and the system freshly booted.

First, lets make sure you have a tape drive. To ensure this, type:
ioscan | grep -i tape

This should return a line something like..
10/0/15/0.3.0 tape HP C1537A

Now, if you list the contents of /dev/rmt, do you have all your drivers?
ls /dev/rmt
0m 0mnb c2t3d0BESTn c2t3d0DDSb stape_config
0mb c2t3d0BEST c2t3d0BESTnb c2t3d0DDSn
0mn c2t3d0BESTb c2t3d0DDS c2t3d0DDSnb

If you have devices, you need to check the status of the device. Use this command.
mt -t /dev/rmt/0m status

It should return something like:
Drive: HP C1537A
Format:
Status: [0]
File: 0
Block: 0


In this case, file 0 and block 0 mean I have a tape in the device.

If you have a physically bad tape, the above will error. Try a different tape before using. NOTE: With 4mm tapes, certain vendors do not have proper working tape access panels, so they jam open or closed.

Regards,
Shannon