Mounting a SCSI Tape drive
Posts: 4
First of all I have to let you know I'm a complete newbie when it comes to Linux.
I know very little but I'm trying to learn.
I have a tape drive that I'm trying to recover the data on a few tapes from. in the infocenter under SCSI I can see my Dat drive in id:03 I'm assuming that I have to mount this drive before I can use it. I tried to use this:
mount /dev/st0 /mnt/tape
after hitting enter nothing happened and the console seemed to lock up (yet I can still type in it but nothing happens)
if I use the command mt -f /dev/st0 status I get some info returned so I know I communicate with the device.
What do I have to do to access this drive?
FYI Seagate 04106-xxxRev:7550
Thanks
Ron
Tape Drives
Posts: 4
I wasn't aware you can mount tape drives. I thought you just used the mt,Tar or CPIO commands.
I didn't make the tapes but I have to get the info off them, how can I figure out the format?
I tried to mount a drive once and it messed up the command window.
Ron
Don't know much about tapes
Posts: 4077
Don't know much about tapes but you can probably make a bit-by -bit copy with:
dd if=/dev/st0 of=output_file
And then play with the file... Of course if the tape is huge the file will be huge too.
--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs
Mounting a SCSI Tape drive
Posts: 2280
Have you tried clicking on your home folder and then the yellow services star then click on plus sign by storage media to expand & seem if its shown? I have gotten used to opening things that are problamatic by other means that way. Usb flash drives and even a zip drive opened right away with konqueror. By the way if you are using an early version of Mepis use the three baloons up the directory tree a ways
jim
Errors
Posts: 4
When using the DD command I got dd: reading '/dev/st0': Input/output error.
The drive is not under storage media, just CDROM floppy and Hard drive.
Ron
new info
Posts: 4
I recieved some new info today on the tapes, they were made using UnixWare V1.1 integerated backup utility.
Is there a program that I can get that would use the same format that was used back then?
Ron
Errors
Posts: 2280
When using the DD command I got dd: reading '/dev/st0': Input/output error.The drive is not under storage media, just CDROM floppy and Hard drive.
Ron
Try clicking on some of the hard drive icons in storage media and see what konqueror comes up with, it may be seeing it as a sdd or hdd. I can't think of any other way to auto-mount and see whats on your tapes at the moment. Or open a konsole and run lshw to see if its detected. As root, su & root password then lshw.
jim
further suggestions
Posts: 4864
I have asked around...
I guess the first thing to do is go search for info on the UnixWare backup
program, see if it's basically tar or something.
He could use tar -tvf /dev/st0blah blah (whatever the device is) to see if it
is a tar format archive. This would run through the tape and list the files.
mount item
Posts: 4864
you need to first make /mnt/tape
then you will need to determine the file format on the tape
so that you can specify the format in the command
mount /dev/st0 -t [format] /mnt/tape