MT(1) BSD General Commands Manual MT(1)NAMEmt — magnetic tape manipulation
SYNOPSISmt [-f tapename] command [count]
DESCRIPTION
The mt program is used to give commands to a magnetic tape drive. By
default mt performs the requested operation once. Operations may be per‐
formed multiple times by specifying count.
Note that tapename must reference a raw (not block) tape device. If
tapename is of the form "host:tapename", or "user@host:tapename", mt
writes to the named tape device on the remote host using rmt(8).
The rmt(8) process on the remote host is typically initiated via rsh(1),
although an alternate method such as ssh(1) can be specified via the
RCMD_CMD environment variable.
The available commands are listed below. Only as many characters as are
required to uniquely identify a command need be specified.
asf Move forward count files from the beginning of the tape. This
is accomplished by a rewind followed by fsf count.
eof, weof Write count end-of-file marks at the current position on the
tape.
fsf Forward space count files.
fsr Forward space count records.
bsf Back space count files.
bsr Back space count records.
rewind Rewind the tape. (The count is ignored.)
offline, rewoffl
Rewind the tape and place the tape unit off-line. Where sup‐
ported, this ejects the tape. (The count is ignored.)
status Print status information about the tape unit. (The count is
ignored.)
retension Retensions the tape. Not all tape drives support this fea‐
ture. (The count is ignored.)
erase Erases the tape Not all tape drives support this feature.
(The count is ignored.)
eew Enable or disable early warning EOM behaviour. Set count to
nonzero to enable, zero to disable.
eom Forward space to the end of recorded media. (The count is
ignored.)
blocksize, setblk
Set the tape blocksize to count bytes. A count of zero sets
variable blocksize.
density, setdensity
Set the tape density code to count as specified in the SCSI-3
specification. See the DENSITY CODES section for a list of
codes for commonly used media types.
rdspos Read the logical block position of the tape. Not all tape
drives support this feature. (The count is ignored.)
rdhpos Read the hardware block position of the tape. Not all tape
drives support this feature. (The count is ignored.)
setspos Set the logical block position of the tape to count. Not all
tape drives support this feature.
sethpos Set the hardware block position of the tape to count. Not all
tape drives support this feature.
compress If count is zero, disable compression. Otherwise enable com‐
pression. Not all tape drives support this feature.
If a tape name is not specified, and the environment variable TAPE is not
set, then mt uses the device /dev/nrst0.
ENVIRONMENT
If the following environment variables exist, they are used by mt.
TAPE mt uses device filename given in the TAPE environment vari‐
able if the tapename argument is not given.
RCMD_CMD mt will use RCMD_CMD rather than /usr/bin/rsh to invoke
rmt(8) on a remote machine. The full path name must be spec‐
ified.
FILES
/dev/rst* Raw SCSI tape device
/dev/rmt* Raw magnetic tape device
EXIT STATUSmt returns a 0 exit status when the operation(s) were successful, 1 if
the command was unrecognized, and 2 if an operation failed.
DENSITY CODES
The SCSI-3 specification defines a number of density codes for various
tape media, some of which are listed here. Note that many tape drive
vendors also define model-specific codes.
Code Format
0 Device default
1 1/2" 800 bpi
2 1/2" 1600 bpi
3 1/2" 6250 bpi
4 QIC-11
5 QIC-24
15 QIC-120
16 QIC-150
17 QIC-320/525
18 QIC-1320/1350
19 DDS
28 QIC-385M
29 QIC-410M
30 QIC-1000C
31 QIC-2100C
32 QIC-6GB
33 QIC-20GB
34 QIC-2GB
35 QIC-875M
36 DDS-2
37 DDS-3
38 DDS-4
SEE ALSOdd(1), ioctl(2), mtio(4), st(4), environ(7)HISTORY
The mt utility appeared in 4.3BSD.
BSD March 9, 2008 BSD
