I have a HP Ultrium 960 Tape Drive (800GB). I was having a few issues with an application reading the tape so I was doing some diags using the 'mt' command. I rewound the tape and then inadvertantly did a 'weof' command. So now I have an 'eof' at the beginning of the tape.

Is there any way of recovering from this? I need the data off the tape.

If I run mt -f /dev/rmt/2 status I get 'sense key = EOF'
If I run gtar -ztvf /dev/rmt/2 I get 'unexpected end of file'
Can I use the command mt -f /dev/rmt/2 fsf 1 ? And what would that do?
If I let the application try and restore from the tape it responds 'unable to find header'.

Thanks and regards

If the mark is an end of file and NOT end of tape then you should be able to address the tape drive multiple times through the nonrewinding interface. Then name of that interface depends on your Linux distribution. Doing this the first time should move the tape past the EOF marker. Then you should be able to read whatever data is left on the tape.

Usually the nonrewinding interface for a tape device is the same as the tape device except that it begins with the letter n. If your tape drive is /dev/rmt1 then the nonrewinding interface should be /dev/nrmt1.

So you could use the dd command to move the tape past the EOF, then read the rest of the data.
Now read the rest of the data.

You should always state the Linux distribution and version that you are working with.

Thanks stress_junkie for getting back to me.
This may be a solaris enquiry not a linux. When I run uname -X I get the following:-
System = SunOS
Node = pinn810-1
Release = 5.10
KernelID = Generic_118855-36
Machine = i86pc

I thought it was a linux OS because of the GRUB menu at boot up. I inserted the tape and did a mt -f /dev/rmt/2 fsr 1. A status here showed I was at EOF. If I do another mt -f /dev/rmt/2 fsr 1 I get 'failed I/O error". Don't know if this means anything? Now that I am at EOF I tried dd if=/dev/nrmt/2 of=/dev/null. Response was: 'dd: /dev/nrmt/2: open: No such file or directory'.

There is no nrmt in the /dev directory. If I do a dd if=/dev/rmt/2 of=/dev/null (without the 'n'), I get 0+0 records in 0+0 records out.

I had a look at the doc for 'tar' looking for a command that might be able to read the tape from the EOF point on, but could not see how to do this. If I can read the file info then my next move would be to try and extract it.
regards.....