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How Linux Works
book

How Linux Works

by Brian Ward
May 2004
Beginner content levelBeginner
368 pages
8h 44m
English
No Starch Press
Content preview from How Linux Works

Tape Drive Devices

Tape devices are character devices on a Linux system, going by a variety of filenames:

  • SCSI tapes use the names /dev/st0, /dev/nst0, /dev/st1, /dev/nst1, and so on. The SCSI tape drive interface and driver is widely regarded as the most reliable, but, of course, SCSI tape drives are also more expensive than others.

  • ATAPI tape devices start at /dev/ht0 and /dev/nht0.

  • There is limited support for tape drives on the floppy controller at /dev/ft0 and /dev/ntf0.

To identify a tape drive, look in your kernel messages for lines like this:

 Vendor: HP Model: C1533A Rev: 9503 Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 st: Version 20010812, bufsize 32768, wrt 30720, max init. bufs 4, s/g segs 16 Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781593270353Errata