How do I determine type of tape in tape drive

[Bob Britton]

We have a DD3 tape drive. We've instructed our client to use DD3 tapes, but
it's not always the case. What command can I use to determine if the tape
currently in the drive is a DDS1, DDS2 or DDS3?

[Bill Slaughter_1]

Here is a section of a script we use to determine the type of tape in the
drive. This works both for 10.2 and 11.0 systems. Best thing to do is cut the
below and reassemble it, since the format got screwed up when I pasted it
below:

.
.
.
if [ "$status" != "100%" ] # The system is remote shellable
then # Convoluted process for
determining
# the tape drive type.
td=`remsh $box -n "/usr/bin/ll /dev/rmt/default"`
td2=`echo $td|awk '{print $11}'|cut -c10` # td & td2 = What is
the default device (normally 0m)?
td3=`remsh $box -n "/usr/sbin/ioscan -C tape -fun|grep 'tape
$td2' "`
td4=`echo $td3|awk '{print $8}'` # td3 & td4 = What is
the tape drive model?
case $td4 in
HP35480A) tapedrive="DCLZ"
tapetype=" 90m DDS";;
C1533A) tapedrive="DDS2"
tapetype="120m DDS2";;
C1537A) tapedrive="DDS3"
tapetype="120m DDS2";;
*) tapedrive="Unknown"
tapetype="Unknown";;
esac

[Bob Britton]

The script portion tells what kind of tape drive it is, but it doesn't tell
what kind of tape is in the drive.

[Carlos Riera]

There is a patch for /usr/bin/mt wich include 'status' option.

Search on individual patch.

Output from mt status:
mt -t /dev/rmt/1mn
status

Drive: Quantum
DLT4000

Format: DLT 81633 bpi 64 tracks compressed (40
GB)

Status: [a1118385] EOF EOT online compression
immediate-report-mode

File:
24

Block: -1