about tape drive and more
 

I have a scsi tape driver (SONY sdt-7000) on scsi adpater card. Linux detected the adapter card but i am out of idea to access the tape on the tape driver. And i dont know whether linux has taken tape driver also. i searched /dev file and found more than 10 files w filename starting w word "sdt". Is this the one? but it didnt worked. pls help this dude.

Also, i had hdfs formatted floppy which i realsied contained some very interestring docs. I tried to copy its contents to my hdd. mount failed saying hdfs not supported by kernel. so i did "tar xvf /dev/fd0" and wow..all the contents of floppy came into my local drive. But then i tried to copy it to another fd. but only few part got copied. whssa prob. pls help again,

pls give sols to two probs. thnx

Copy & paste the output of
lsmod
please ... you will need the physical device driver
for the SCSI Controller, generic SCSI support and
the tape-driver (modprobe st if it's not loaded) to
operate a tape-drive.
Also check your output of
dmesg
for any hints on the device having been picked up
during boot.


Cheers,
Tink

The device files for scsi tape drives are /dev/st0(rewind) and /dev/nst0(no rewind). When using st0 the tape will automatically rewind at the conclusion of the operation; when using nst0, the tape won't rewind. To test if the tape is being recognized insert a tape in the drive and in a console run:

$ su
<enter root password>
# mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind

If your system recognizes the tape drive, the tape should do a rewind.

Don't you mean hpfs? Or was it just a typo? I do not know if hpfs support is included in a default kernel.

You need to load the tape module st. i.e.
modprobe st

Also install the tape utilities called mt. Your tape device will be /dev/st0 (rewinds upon completion of command) and /dev/nst0 ( no rewind ).
The command:
mt -f /dev/nst0 status

Will display the status of the tape drive. You can use the tar (Tape archiver ) command to write to the drive. You can also find backup utilities on the freshmeat website.

tar -cvf /dev/st0 /data (for example, to write to tape)

thank u guys for all ur help. it worked just fine. I could now access the tape.
by "tar commnd". its content stored in /home but i couldnt copy it to a floppy. Mounting didnt worked. "tar cmd" stores only random part of it. (I re-tar the fdd content back ..and compared to saved copy in /home).
pls help me.
I'd like to mention that software was made for sco-unix and I was trying to port the system into linux (Against all opposition and this endeavor is somewhat secret until i prove that linux box can also good ). many imp applications still remain inside the sco-box. I
want to copy these to tape sony sdt-700. but probs and confusions. where is tape device file located in sco-unix? pls help me.