MT(1)

NAME
mt - magnetic tape manipulating program

SYNOPSIS
mt [ -f tapename ] command [ count ]

DESCRIPTION
Mt is used to give commands to a magnetic tape drive. If a tape name is not specified, the environment variable TAPE is used; if TAPE does not exist, mt uses the device /dev/rmt12. Note that tapename must reference a raw (not block) tape device. By default mt performs the requested operation once. Operations may be performed multiple times by specifying count.

The available commands are listed below. Only as many characters as are required to uniquely identify a command need be specified.

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 (Count is ignored).

offline, rewoffl
    Rewind the tape and place the tape unit off-line (Count is ignored).

status
    Print status information about the tape unit.

cacheon
    Enable the readahead/writebehind cache on the tape unit.

cacheoff
    Turn off the readahead/writebehind cache on the tape unit.

Mt returns a 0 exit status when the operation(s) were successful, 1 if the command was unrecognized, and 2 if an operation failed.

The cacheon and cacheoff commands currently only apply to the TMSCP driver and then only for certain drives such as the TU81+. No error is produced by the TMSCP driver if the cache commands are used. Other drivers will return an error code since they do not recognize the MTCACHE and MTNOCACHE functions codes. See mtio(4).

FILES
/dev/rmt*    Raw magnetic tape interface

SEE ALSO
mtio(4), tmscp(4), dd(1), ioctl(2), environ(7)