Ejecting a stuck tape

[Scott Frye_1]

Is there a command I can use to eject a DAT tape from a drive? The dirve does not respond to the manual eject button.

Grasping at straws...

Scott

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

The "mt offl" command will eject a tape - if it can. I don't hold much hope but give it a try:

mt -t /dev/rmt/0m offl


Pete

[Marvin Strong]

mt -t {tapedev} offl

[Patrick Wallek]

If the tape is well and truly stuck, you may have to power the drive off and back on. That sometimes works. If this is an internal drive on a system you may be out of luck unless it is a host swappable drive. If it is hot swappable, pull it out, wait a few seconds, and then put it back in.

If none of that works, you may have to get the drive replaced and possibly lose a tape.

[Scott Frye_1]

I tried the mt offl command and it tells me no such device or address, so I'm assuming this is really messed up. We've scheduled a downtime for Sunday. Hopfully powering it down and back up will work. This is an internal drive.