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On Thu, 10 Jan 2013, Edwin Rhodes wrote:
Hi I am looking for a Linux boot disk that will enable me to format tapes on a scsi drive Any ideas?
Tapes don't need to be formatted. You just use them. You need a kernel with the 'st' (scsi tape) drivers installed, along with the right hardware (scsi card, cabling, etc.)
then you simple copy data to them - e.g. tar (tape archive) tar cf /dev/st0 /directory-to-backupthe easy way to think of a tape is to think of it as one big file, however you can have multiple files on a tape, but I don't recommend it.
Also make sure your distro has the 'mt' command - that's the genric mag tape handling command, however about the only commands you want are retension (winds a tape from end to end) and rewoffl - rewind and offline (ie. eject) a tape.
e.g. mt -f /dev/st0 rewofflTapes are normally rewound when you close the device, but the non-rewinding device often has a 'n' appended to it - e.g. /dev/st0n
(or is it /dev/nst0)you'll need to check. However you only need the non-rewinding device when writing multiple files to the same tape. PITA that is, so use something like tar, cpio or dump.
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq