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33 .\" @(#)mt.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
41 .Nd magnetic tape manipulating program
54 utility is used to command a magnetic tape drive for operations
55 other than reading or writing data.
63 environment variable described below.
65 The available commands are listed below.
67 characters as are required to uniquely identify a command
70 The following commands optionally take a
73 .Bl -tag -width ".Cm erase"
77 end-of-file (EOF) marks at the current position.
81 setmarks at the current position (DDS drives only).
93 setmarks (DDS drives only).
105 setmarks (DDS drives only).
107 Erase the tape using a long (often very long) method.
110 of 0, it will erase the tape using a quick method.
111 Operation is not guaranteed if the tape is not at its beginning.
112 The tape will be at its beginning upon completion.
115 The following commands ignore
117 .Bl -tag -width ".Cm geteotmodel"
119 Read the hardware block position.
121 number reported is specific for that hardware only.
122 With drive data compression especially,
123 this position may have more to do with the amount of data
124 sent to the drive than the amount of data written to tape.
125 Some drives do not support this.
127 Read the SCSI logical block position.
128 This typically is greater than the hardware position
129 by the number of end-of-file marks.
130 Some drives do not support this.
133 .It Cm offline , rewoffl
134 Rewind the tape and place the drive off line.
135 Some drives are never off line.
138 This winds the tape from the current position to the end
139 and then to the beginning.
140 This sometimes improves subsequent reading and writing,
141 particularly for streaming drives.
142 Some drives do not support this.
144 Output status information about the drive.
145 For SCSI magnetic tape devices,
146 the current operating modes of density, blocksize, and whether compression
147 is enabled is reported.
148 The current state of the driver (what it thinks that
149 it is doing with the device) is reported.
150 If the driver knows the relative
151 position from BOT (in terms of filemarks and records), it outputs that.
153 that this information is not definitive (only BOT, End of Recorded Media, and
154 hardware or SCSI logical block position (if the drive supports such) are
155 considered definitive tape positions).
157 Output (and clear) error status information about this device.
159 operation (e.g., a read or a write) and every control operation (e.g,, a
160 rewind), the driver stores up the last command executed and it is associated
161 status and any residual counts (if any).
162 This command retrieves and outputs this
164 If possible, this also clears any latched error information.
166 Output the current EOT filemark model.
168 many filemarks will be written at close if a tape was being written.
170 Wind the tape to the end of the recorded data,
171 typically after an EOF mark where another file may be written.
174 The following commands require an
176 .Bl -tag -width ".Cm seteotmodel"
178 Set the hardware block position.
181 is a hardware block number to which to position the tape.
182 Some drives do not support this.
184 Set the SCSI logical block position.
187 is a SCSI logical block number to which to position the tape.
188 Some drives do not support this.
190 Set the block size for the drive.
193 is the number of bytes per block,
194 except 0 commands the drive to use variable-length blocks.
196 Set the EOT filemark model to
198 and output the old and new models.
199 Typically this will be 2
200 filemarks, but some devices (typically QIC cartridge drives) can
201 only write 1 filemark.
202 You may only choose a value of
207 Set the drive's compression mode.
208 The non-numeric values of
212 .Bl -tag -width 9n -compact
214 Turn compression off.
224 IBM Improved Data Recording Capability compression (0x10).
226 DCLZ compression algorithm (0x20).
229 In addition to the above recognized compression keywords, the user can
230 supply a numeric compression algorithm for the drive to use.
232 cases, simply turning the compression
234 will have the desired effect of enabling the default compression algorithm
235 supported by the drive.
236 If this is not the case (see the
238 display to see which compression algorithm is currently in use), the user
239 can manually specify one of the supported compression keywords (above), or
240 supply a numeric compression value from the drive's specifications.
242 Set the density for the drive.
243 For the density codes, see below.
244 The density value could be given either numerically, or as a string,
248 If the string is abbreviated, it will be resolved in the order
249 shown in the table, and the first matching entry will be used.
251 given string and the resulting canonical density name do not match
252 exactly, an informational message is output about what the given
253 string has been taken for.
256 The following density table was taken from the
257 .Sq Historical sequential access density codes
258 table (A-1) in Revision 11 of the SCSI-3 Stream Device Commands (SSC)
259 working draft, dated November 11, 1997.
261 The density codes are:
262 .Bd -literal -offset 3n
263 0x0 default for device
264 0xE reserved for ECMA
266 Value Width Tracks Density Code Type Reference Note
268 0x01 12.7 (0.5) 9 32 (800) NRZI R X3.22-1983 2
269 0x02 12.7 (0.5) 9 63 (1,600) PE R X3.39-1986 2
270 0x03 12.7 (0.5) 9 246 (6,250) GCR R X3.54-1986 2
271 0x05 6.3 (0.25) 4/9 315 (8,000) GCR C X3.136-1986 1
272 0x06 12.7 (0.5) 9 126 (3,200) PE R X3.157-1987 2
273 0x07 6.3 (0.25) 4 252 (6,400) IMFM C X3.116-1986 1
274 0x08 3.81 (0.15) 4 315 (8,000) GCR CS X3.158-1987 1
275 0x09 12.7 (0.5) 18 1,491 (37,871) GCR C X3.180 2
276 0x0A 12.7 (0.5) 22 262 (6,667) MFM C X3B5/86-199 1
277 0x0B 6.3 (0.25) 4 63 (1,600) PE C X3.56-1986 1
278 0x0C 12.7 (0.5) 24 500 (12,690) GCR C HI-TC1 1,6
279 0x0D 12.7 (0.5) 24 999 (25,380) GCR C HI-TC2 1,6
280 0x0F 6.3 (0.25) 15 394 (10,000) GCR C QIC-120 1,6
281 0x10 6.3 (0.25) 18 394 (10,000) GCR C QIC-150 1,6
282 0x11 6.3 (0.25) 26 630 (16,000) GCR C QIC-320 1,6
283 0x12 6.3 (0.25) 30 2,034 (51,667) RLL C QIC-1350 1,6
284 0x13 3.81 (0.15) 1 2,400 (61,000) DDS CS X3B5/88-185A 5
285 0x14 8.0 (0.315) 1 1,703 (43,245) RLL CS X3.202-1991 5
286 0x15 8.0 (0.315) 1 1,789 (45,434) RLL CS ECMA TC17 5
287 0x16 12.7 (0.5) 48 394 (10,000) MFM C X3.193-1990 1
288 0x17 12.7 (0.5) 48 1,673 (42,500) MFM C X3B5/91-174 1
289 0x18 12.7 (0.5) 112 1,673 (42,500) MFM C X3B5/92-50 1
290 0x19 12.7 (0.5) 128 2,460 (62,500) RLL C DLTapeIII 6,7
291 0x1A 12.7 (0.5) 128 3,214 (81,633) RLL C DLTapeIV(20) 6,7
292 0x1B 12.7 (0.5) 208 3,383 (85,937) RLL C DLTapeIV(35) 6,7
293 0x1C 6.3 (0.25) 34 1,654 (42,000) MFM C QIC-385M 1,6
294 0x1D 6.3 (0.25) 32 1,512 (38,400) GCR C QIC-410M 1,6
295 0x1E 6.3 (0.25) 30 1,385 (36,000) GCR C QIC-1000C 1,6
296 0x1F 6.3 (0.25) 30 2,666 (67,733) RLL C QIC-2100C 1,6
297 0x20 6.3 (0.25) 144 2,666 (67,733) RLL C QIC-6GB(M) 1,6
298 0x21 6.3 (0.25) 144 2,666 (67,733) RLL C QIC-20GB(C) 1,6
299 0x22 6.3 (0.25) 42 1,600 (40,640) GCR C QIC-2GB(C) ?
300 0x23 6.3 (0.25) 38 2,666 (67,733) RLL C QIC-875M ?
301 0x24 3.81 (0.15) 1 2,400 (61,000) CS DDS-2 5
302 0x25 3.81 (0.15) 1 3,816 (97,000) CS DDS-3 5
303 0x26 3.81 (0.15) 1 3,816 (97,000) CS DDS-4 5
304 0x27 8.0 (0.315) 1 3,056 (77,611) RLL CS Mammoth 5
305 0x28 12.7 (0.5) 36 1,491 (37,871) GCR C X3.224 1
308 0x2B 12.7 (0.5) 3 ? ? ? C X3.267 5
309 0x41 12.7 (0.5) 208 3,868 (98,250) RLL C DLTapeIV(40) 6,7
310 0x48 12.7 (0.5) 448 5,236 (133,000) PRML C SDLTapeI(110) 6,8
311 0x49 12.7 (0.5) 448 7,598 (193,000) PRML C SDLTapeI(160) 6,8
313 .Bd -literal -offset 3n
314 Code Description Type Description
315 ---- -------------------------------------- ---- -----------
316 NRZI Non return to zero, change on ones R Reel-to-reel
317 GCR Group code recording C Cartridge
318 PE Phase encoded CS Cassette
319 IMFM Inverted modified frequency modulation
320 MFM Modified frequency modulation
322 RLL Run length limited
323 PRML Partial Response Maximum Likelihood
325 .Bd -literal -offset 3n
328 2. Parallel recorded.
329 3. Old format known as QIC-11.
331 6. This is not an American National Standard. The reference is based on
332 an industry standard definition of the media format.
333 7. DLT recording: serially recorded track pairs (DLTapeIII and
334 DLTapeIV(20)), or track quads (DLTapeIV(35) and DLTapeIV(40)).
335 8. Super DLT (SDLT) recording: 56 serially recorded logical tracks with
336 8 physical tracks each.
339 .Bl -tag -width ".Ev TAPE"
341 This is the pathname of the tape drive.
342 The default (if the variable is unset, but not if it is null) is
344 It may be overridden with the
349 .Bl -tag -width ".Pa /dev/*sa[0-9]*" -compact
351 QIC-02/QIC-36 magnetic tape interface
352 .It Pa /dev/*sa[0-9]*
353 SCSI magnetic tape interface
356 The exit status will be 0 when the drive operations were successful,
357 2 when the drive operations were unsuccessful, and 1 for other
358 problems like an unrecognized command or a missing drive device.
360 Some undocumented commands support old software.
374 Extensions regarding the
380 command, and have been merged into the
387 command that used to be a synonym for
389 has been abandoned in
391 since it was often confused with
393 which is fairly dangerous.
395 The utility cannot be interrupted or killed during a long erase
396 (which can be longer than an hour), and it is easy to forget
397 that the default erase is long.
399 Hardware block numbers do not always correspond to blocks on the tape
400 when the drive uses internal compression.
402 Erasure is not guaranteed if the tape is not at its beginning.
404 Tape-related documentation is poor, here and elsewhere.