How to use a tape drive

Setup

On Red Hat systems, install the mt-st package to get the mt command.

Usage

If you refer to the tape drive as /dev/st0, it will automatically rewind after the command has finished. Refer to it as /dev/nst0 if you don't want it to rewind.

To see where you are on the tape:

mt -f /dev/nst0 status

To explicitly rewind the tape:

mt -f /dev/st0 rewind

To skip ahead to the next record:

mt -f /dev/nst0 fsf

To copy data to the tape:

tar cf /dev/st0 /etc

To read data from the tape (and write to disk):

tar xf /dev/st0

To erase the tape:

mt -f /dev/st0 erase

To eject the tape:

mt -f /dev/st0 eject

Other mt options that may or may not work:

• fsf - Forward space count files. The tape is positioned on the first block of the next file.
• fsfm - Forward space count files. The tape is positioned on the last block of the previous file.
• bsf - Backward space count files. The tape is positioned on the last block of the previous file.
• bsfm - Backward space count files. The tape is positioned on the first block of the next file.

Moving data directly from a tape drive to a remote host

On the remote host (assuming barney can access the tape drive on koala):

tar --rsh-command=/usr/bin/ssh -xf barney@koala:/dev/st0

(or xzf if the tape is compressed)