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MT(1) BSD General Commands Manual MT(1) NAME mt -- magnetic tape manipulating program SYNOPSIS mt [-f tapename] command [count] DESCRIPTION The mt utility is used to give commands to a magnetic tape drive. By de- fault mt performs the requested operation once. Operations may be per- formed multiple times by specifying count. The available commands are listed below. Only as many characters as are required to uniquely identify a command need be specified. weof Write count end-of-file marks at the current position on the tape. smk Write count setmarks at the current position on the tape. fsf Forward space count files. fsr Forward space count records. fss Forward space count setmarks. bsf Backward space count files. bsr Backward space count records. bss Backward space count setmarks. rdhpos Read Hardware block position. Some drives do not support this. The block number reported is specific for that hardware only. The count argument is ignored. rdspos Read SCSI logical block position. Some drives do not support this. The count argument is ignored. sethpos Set Hardware block position. Some drives do not support this. The count argument is interpreted as a hardware block to which to position the tape. setspos Set SCSI logical block position. Some drives do not support this. The count argument is interpreted as a SCSI logical block to which to position the tape. rewind Rewind the tape (Count is ignored). offline, rewoffl Rewind the tape and place the tape unit off-line (Count is ig- nored). erase Erase the tape. A count of 0 disables long erase, which is on by default. retension Re-tension the tape (one full wind forth and back, Count is ignored). status Print status information about the tape unit. For SCSI mag- netic tape devices, the current operating modes of density, blocksize, and whether compression is enabled is reported. The current state of the driver (what it thinks that it is do- ing with the device) is reported. If the driver knows the relative position from BOT (in terms of filemarks and records), it prints that. Note that this information is not definitive (only BOT, End of Recorded Media, and hardware or SCSI logical block position (if the drive supports such) are considered definitive tape positions). errstat Print (and clear) error status information about this device. For every normal operation (e.g., a read or a write) and every control operation (e.g,, a rewind), the driver stores up the last command executed and it is associated status and any residual counts (if any). This command retrieves and prints this information. If possible, this also clears any latched error information. blocksize Set the block size for the tape unit. Zero means variable- length blocks. density Set the density for the tape unit. For the density codes, see below. The density value could be given either numerically, or as a string, corresponding to the "Reference" field. If the string is abbreviated, it will be resolved in the order shown in the table, and the first matching entry will be used. If the given string and the resulting canonical density name do not match exactly, an informational message is printed about what the given string has been taken for. geteotmodel Fetch and print out the current EOT filemark model. The model states how many filemarks will be written at close if a tape was being written. seteotmodel Set (from the count argument) and print out the current and EOT filemark model. Typically this will be 2 filemarks, but some devices (typically QIC cartridge drives) can only write 1 filemark. Currently you can only choose a value of 1 or 2. eom Forward space to end of recorded medium (Count is ignored). eod Forward space to end of data, identical to eom. comp Set compression mode. There are currently several possible values for the compression mode: off Turn compression off. on Turn compression on. none Same as off. enable Same as on. IDRC IBM Improved Data Recording Capability compression (0x10). DCLZ DCLZ compression algorithm (0x20). In addition to the above recognized compression keywords, the user can supply a numeric compression algorithm for the tape drive to use. In most cases, simply turning the compression `on' will have the desired effect of enabling the default com- pression algorithm supported by the drive. If this is not the case (see the status display to see which compression algo- rithm is currently in use), the user can manually specify one of the supported compression keywords (above), or supply a nu- meric compression value. If a tape name is not specified, and the environment variable TAPE does not exist; mt uses the device /dev/nsa0. The mt utility returns a 0 exit status when the operation(s) were suc- cessful, 1 if the command was unrecognized, and 2 if an operation failed. The following density table was taken from the `Historical sequential access density codes' table (A-1) in Revision 11 of the SCSI-3 Stream De- vice Commands (SSC) working draft, dated November 11, 1997. The different density codes are as follows: 0x0 default for device 0xE reserved for ECMA Value Width Tracks Density Code Type Reference Note mm in bpmm bpi 0x01 12.7 (0.5) 9 32 (800) NRZI R X3.22-1983 2 0x02 12.7 (0.5) 9 63 (1,600) PE R X3.39-1986 2 0x03 12.7 (0.5) 9 246 (6,250) GCR R X3.54-1986 2 0x05 6.3 (0.25) 4/9 315 (8,000) GCR C X3.136-1986 1 0x06 12.7 (0.5) 9 126 (3,200) PE R X3.157-1987 2 0x07 6.3 (0.25) 4 252 (6,400) IMFM C X3.116-1986 1 0x08 3.81 (0.15) 4 315 (8,000) GCR CS X3.158-1987 1 0x09 12.7 (0.5) 18 1,491 (37,871) GCR C X3.180 2 0x0A 12.7 (0.5) 22 262 (6,667) MFM C X3B5/86-199 1 0x0B 6.3 (0.25) 4 63 (1,600) PE C X3.56-1986 1 0x0C 12.7 (0.5) 24 500 (12,690) GCR C HI-TC1 1,6 0x0D 12.7 (0.5) 24 999 (25,380) GCR C HI-TC2 1,6 0x0F 6.3 (0.25) 15 394 (10,000) GCR C QIC-120 1,6 0x10 6.3 (0.25) 18 394 (10,000) GCR C QIC-150 1,6 0x11 6.3 (0.25) 26 630 (16,000) GCR C QIC-320 1,6 0x12 6.3 (0.25) 30 2,034 (51,667) RLL C QIC-1350 1,6 0x13 3.81 (0.15) 1 2,400 (61,000) DDS CS X3B5/88-185A 5 0x14 8.0 (0.315) 1 1,703 (43,245) RLL CS X3.202-1991 5 0x15 8.0 (0.315) 1 1,789 (45,434) RLL CS ECMA TC17 5 0x16 12.7 (0.5) 48 394 (10,000) MFM C X3.193-1990 1 0x17 12.7 (0.5) 48 1,673 (42,500) MFM C X3B5/91-174 1 0x18 12.7 (0.5) 112 1,673 (42,500) MFM C X3B5/92-50 1 0x19 12.7 (0.5) 128 2,460 (62,500) RLL C DLTapeIII 6,7 0x1A 12.7 (0.5) 128 3,214 (81,633) RLL C DLTapeIV(20) 6,7 0x1B 12.7 (0.5) 208 3,383 (85,937) RLL C DLTapeIV(35) 6,7 0x1C 6.3 (0.25) 34 1,654 (42,000) MFM C QIC-385M 1,6 0x1D 6.3 (0.25) 32 1,512 (38,400) GCR C QIC-410M 1,6 0x1E 6.3 (0.25) 30 1,385 (36,000) GCR C QIC-1000C 1,6 0x1F 6.3 (0.25) 30 2,666 (67,733) RLL C QIC-2100C 1,6 0x20 6.3 (0.25) 144 2,666 (67,733) RLL C QIC-6GB(M) 1,6 0x21 6.3 (0.25) 144 2,666 (67,733) RLL C QIC-20GB(C) 1,6 0x22 6.3 (0.25) 42 1,600 (40,640) GCR C QIC-2GB(C) ? 0x23 6.3 (0.25) 38 2,666 (67,733) RLL C QIC-875M ? 0x24 3.81 (0.15) 1 2,400 (61,000) CS DDS-2 5 0x25 3.81 (0.15) 1 3,816 (97,000) CS DDS-3 5 0x26 3.81 (0.15) 1 3,816 (97,000) CS DDS-4 5 0x27 8.0 (0.315) 1 3,056 (77,611) RLL CS Mammoth 5 0x28 12.7 (0.5) 36 1,491 (37,871) GCR C X3.224 1 0x29 12.7 (0.5) 0x2A 0x2B 12.7 (0.5) 3 ? ? ? C X3.267 5 0x41 12.7 (0.5) 208 3,868 (98,250) RLL C DLTapeIV(40) 6,7 0x48 12.7 (0.5) 448 5,236 (133,000) PRML C SDLTapeI(110) 6,8 0x49 12.7 (0.5) 448 7,598 (193,000) PRML C SDLTapeI(160) 6,8 Code Description Type Description ---------------- ---------------- NRZI Non return to zero, change on ones R Reel-to-reel GCR Group code recording C Cartridge PE Phase encoded CS Cassette IMFM Inverted modified frequency modulation MFM Modified frequency modulation DDS DAT data storage RLL Run length limited PRML Partial Response Maximum Likelihood NOTES 1. Serial recorded. 2. Parallel recorded. 3. Old format known as QIC-11. 5. Helical scan. 6. This is not an American National Standard. The reference is based on an industry standard definition of the media format. 7. DLT recording: serially recorded track pairs (DLTapeIII and DLTapeIV(20)), or track quads (DLTapeIV(35) and DLTapeIV(40)). 8. Super DLT (SDLT) recording: 56 serially recorded logical tracks with 8 physical tracks each. ENVIRONMENT If the following environment variable exists, it is utilized by mt. TAPE The mt utility checks the TAPE environment variable if the argument tapename is not given. FILES /dev/*wt* QIC-02/QIC-36 magnetic tape interface /dev/*sa[0-9]* SCSI magnetic tape interface SEE ALSO dd(1), ioctl(2), ast(4), mtio(4), sa(4), environ(7) HISTORY The mt command appeared in 4.3BSD. Extensions regarding the st(4) driver appeared in 386BSD 0.1 as a sepa- rate st command, and have been merged into the mt command in FreeBSD 2.1. The former eof command that used to be a synonym for weof has been aban- doned in FreeBSD 2.1 since it was often confused with eom, which is fairly dangerous. BSD June 6, 1993 BSD
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | SEE ALSO | HISTORY
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