Detecting DAT drive tapes

[Edward McCouch]

I need to write a script that will be activated by a cronjob to begin a make_recovery tape. Does anyone know what commands are used to figure out if there is a tape in a drive? I'm not sure where to start.

[Dietmar Konermann]

I usually use the diskinfo command. It sends also an SIOC_CAPACITY to the drive... which fails if no medium is inserted (no such device or address).

Best regards...
Dietmar.

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

You can use the "mt status" command. Here's the result from an empty drive:

yukon(137)root# mt status
Drive: HP C1537A
Format:
Status: [0]
File: 0
Block: 0


And here's the result with a tape present:

yukon(138)root# mt status
Drive: HP C1537A
Format: DDS-1 format
Status: [45111300] BOT write-protected online compression immediate-report-mode

File: 0
Block: 0


Pete

[Steven E. Protter]

istape=`ioscan -fnC tape | wc -l`

if [ istape gt 0 ]
echo "I found a tape drive"
else
echo "I didn't find a tape drive"
exit 1
fi

SEP

[Michael Steele_2]

I've always used the mt command in my auto make_tape_recovery scripts and then checked its status.

mt -t /dev/rmt/0m rew
if [ $? !0 ]
then
echo alert | mailx -s ...etc.
fi

[Dario_1]

Hi!

Check this out:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xfc5d42308663d611abdb0090277a778c,00.html

Regards,

DR

[Edward McCouch]

Thank you all for responding. I was able to use the mt command to do what I wanted.