Using the mt command
There are differences between the MTIO interface for channel-attached tapes and other tape drives. Correspondingly, some operations of the mt command are different for channel-attached tapes.
The mt command handles basic tape control in Linux®. See the man page for general information about mt.
Basic Linux tape control is handled by the mt utility. See the man page for general information about mt.
- setdensity
- has no effect because the recording density is automatically detected on channel-attached tape hardware.
- drvbuffer
- has no effect because channel-attached tape hardware automatically switches to unbuffered mode if buffering is unavailable.
- lock / unlock
- have no effect because channel-attached tape hardware does not support media locking.
- setpartition / mkpartition
- have no effect because channel-attached tape hardware does not support partitioning.
- status
- returns a structure that, aside from the block number, contains mostly SCSI-related data that does not apply to the tape device driver.
- load
- does not automatically load a tape but waits for a tape to be loaded manually.
- offline or rewoffl or eject
- all include expelling the currently loaded tape. Depending on the stacker mode, it might attempt to load the next tape.