Very Computer

by **Robert J. Goodin** » Tue, 13 Oct 1998 04:00:00

I am trying to do a dump with a 8mm exabyte tape drive,
and have followed the advice listed on several posts
for using the command "dump". below is the output that I find:

Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sda1 4044375 1203648 2631482 31% /

DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Mon Oct 12 09:40:29 1998
DUMP: Date of last level 0 dump: the epoch
DUMP: Dumping /dev/sda1 (/) to /dev/nst0
DUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
DUMP: estimated 1257135 tape blocks on 0.63 tape(s).
DUMP: Cannot open output "/dev/nst0".
DUMP: Do you want to retry the open?: ("yes" or "no") y
DUMP: Cannot open output "/dev/nst0".

This is the first time that I have used the tape drive (with
this OS - RH5.1, P II 300 box), and I confess to not being
able to find out if my communications with the drive are getting
through. What simple test can I do to determine if I
have things set up properly to write to the tape drive?

thanks bob

gooding AT physics DOT queensu DOT ca

by **Joel Peterso** » Fri, 16 Oct 1998 04:00:00

> This is the first time that I have used the tape drive (with
> this OS - RH5.1, P II 300 box), and I confess to not being
> able to find out if my communications with the drive are getting
> through. What simple test can I do to determine if I
> have things set up properly to write to the tape drive?

The 'mt' command can give some status for tape drives. You should see a
line like the following during boot (and in /var/log/messages or output
by the 'dmesg' command):

Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 5, lun 0

Here's an example of the 'mt' command

---------

% mt -f /dev/nst0 status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x29 (unknown).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN

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Very Computer

Cannot open output "/dev/nst0" problem

Cannot open output "/dev/nst0" problem

Cannot open output "/dev/nst0" problem