Subject: Checking on possible bug in mt...

From: Rob Browning <[email-masked]>
Date: 01 Sep 1996 12:36:51 -0500

I'm trying to decide if this is a bug in mt, or my relative
inexperience with tape drives.  If it's a bug I'll report it, and
it'll probably have to go to the upstream maintainers.

Basically I have a HP SCSI-II DAT drive (C1533A) that, according to
HP, supports the Read Position command.  However "mt --tell" which
supposedly depends on that command fails.

# mt --file /dev/nst0 tell
mt: /dev/nst0: Function not implemented

Any idea why?

Thanks
--
Rob

---

From: Brian Mays <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 1996 13:01:28 -0400

>>>>> Rob Browning writes:

    Rob> I'm trying to decide if this is a bug in mt, or my relative
    Rob> inexperience with tape drives.  If it's a bug I'll report it,
    Rob> and it'll probably have to go to the upstream maintainers.

    Rob> # mt --file /dev/nst0 tell
    Rob> mt: /dev/nst0: Function not implemented

    Rob> Any idea why?

Well, all that mt does is call `ioctl (desc, MTIOCTOP, &position)'.
>From this function, a `-1' is returned to mt, thereby signaling an
error, and errno is set, by ioctl, to the code for a `Function not
implemented' error.

If there is a problem, it is probably with the Linux SCSI tape driver.

--
Brian