mt: Magnetic Tape

The -f (or -t) means that what follows is the name of the tape device.

Some of the most useful commands are:

1. rewind: rewinds the tape to the beginning.
2. retension: retensions the tape: forward to the end, then rewind back to the beginning. Using this command is recommended when a tape has not been written to/read from for a long time.
3. erase: erases the entire tape. Available only on SunOS.
4. fsf: forward space one file if no count is given; forward space count files if this option is used.
5. bsf: backward space one file if no count given; backward space count files if this option is used.
6. feom: forward end of media; at the end of the last file on the tape.
7. status: returns the state of the tape drive.

The following table shows the name of the tape devices to use on a Sun and a Silicon Graphics Workstation.

 
Table 11.2: 1/4 inch cartridge tape devices

``no rewind" means that after executing the command, the tape drive will NOT rewind to the beginning. This allows the user to read/write two files in a row, or to forward space the tape one or more files.

Prior to IRIX 5.x on Silicon Graphics, writing files on the cartridge tapes would change the order of the bytes (called byte-swapping). For a Sun to read those tapes, they need to have been written with the no-swap option set (i.e. for an SGI to read Sun tapes, the driver to use is ``/dev/tapens" (now default in IRIX 5.x)).