mt refuses to report location on the tape - SOLUTION

[Anthony Reynolds]

Apparently a bug was introduced into version 2.6.9-5 of the Linux kernel
which made "mt -f /dev/nst0 tell" stop working.

 

This was fixed again in kernel 2.6.9-55.  Downloading Update 2 of RHEL4
resolves the problem.

 

Many thanks to all who replied to my previous posting.

 

Kind regards

 

Anthony Reynolds

 

Image Diagnostic Technology Ltd

London, England

 

 

 

From: Anthony Reynolds [mailto:rar at ctscan.co.uk] 
Sent: 22 July 2007 21:35
To: 'redhat-list at redhat.com'
Subject: mt refuses to report location on the tape

 

Dear All,

 

This is a follow-on to a previous posting as we have encountered the exact
same problem with RHEL ES4:

 

We attached a Quantum 8000 DLT to an Adaptec 39320A SCSI controller - the
tape drive works fine, tar works fine and most of the mt commands work fine
except

 

mt -f /dev/nst0 tell

 

which comes back with "no such device".

 

Everything works fine on an older RH Linux system.

 

If anyone knows the solution to this problem on RHEL 4 we'd be very
grateful.

 

Kind regards 

 

Anthony Reynolds

 

Image Diagnostic Technology Ltd

London, England

 

 

====================================================

Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 11:24:14 -0500

To: redhat-list at redhat.com

 

I have a RHEL WS 4 Update 1 machine with a DLT drive attached. A user 
wants to use it, but is encountering some weird behavior from mt. 

The device shows up in dmesg, the module is loaded, and /dev/st0 and 
/dev/nst0 exist. tar -tvf will successfully list the contents of a tape 
in the drive. However, 'mt -f /dev/nst0 tell' fails with 'no such 
device'. Normally I would suspect that the tape drive doesn't have this 
capability, but this command worked just fine with the machine's former 
Redhat 7.2 install. mt's other functions, including rewind, etc. appear 
to be working fine. 

Any ideas? 

-Mindy 

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