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/tape. This latter should be set up as required as a symbolic or hard link to the real tape device (/dev/rct* by convention). Note that whatever means is used to specify it, the reference must be to 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.

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

FILES
/dev/tape    Indirection to real tape device

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