Does anyone know the UNIX command to view and/or erase data that is on an 8-track tape? Thanks for your help! Linda
thats kind of a wide angled question.
1) what command was the data written with?
2) what OS was used?
Thanks for your help! Wow what a quick response! Well, I don't know what command that data was written with and I can't be sure about the OS on them. You see we have about 150 8-track tapes that we don't use, they have been in our computer room for years and the purchasing department wants to send them to auction. I work for the local government and we don't throw anything away - we sell it. Before the tapes can be sent to auction I need to make sure all data has been erased. I was thinking if there was a command in UNIX that would allow me to view the contents of the tape and then erase it. Or even view the data and move it elsewhere. Thanks, Linda
the only problem i see with what your trying to do is you dont know the command that wrote to the tape if anything is on them at all.
We make it a pollicy to not toss anything out for at least 1-1.5 years after it is no longer in use. IE tapes. then we send them to a disposale company that specializes in destroying data. I would just say hey have a bon fire one night. Used tapes wont bring much if anything in an auction.
if your on a solaris machine you can try the erase command.
man mt
NAME
mt - control magnetic tape drive operation
SYNOPSIS
mt [-V] [-f device] [--file=device] [--version] operation
[count]
Misc. Reference Manual Pages
erase
Erase the tape.
If you just want to erase the data:
dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/tape obs=x
Where x is the capacity of your tape in bytes. If you don't have /dev/random on your system (such as HP-UX), use /dev/null instead.
OS: Tru64 Unix - Ver 4.0f - DEC 3000(M800).
When I tried to erase some tapes (std DDS(1) 125) on a newly reinstalled OS with the following command ...
# mt -f /dev/nrmt0h erase
And returned the following error ...
Dev erase 1 failed - no such device or address
Little confused as we (myself and a college) were able to vdump the contents of the /var directory to tape with success.
Any suggestions ??? Will try the dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/tape obs=x in the meantime.
Hi again,
Tried : dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/tape obs=516 with no success.
Contents of the tape could still be read.
Any other suggestions to erasing the tape??
Does the device drive /dev/tape exist on your machine? Often, it is a symbolic link to specific device driver.
Please post the output of the command:
ls -l /dev/tape
Neo
No it does not exist.
# ls -l /dev/tape
/dev/tape not found
How/what do I need to do to rectify this?
I think that you're taking PxT too literally here. I think that you were supposed to replace /dev/tape with the name of your tape drive. The actual naming convention varies from system to system. In your case, /dev/nrmt0h seems to be the anwser. I am guessing that the n means "no-rewind" and the h means high density.
Not all tape drivers can handle all possible options of the mt command. The driver does not know how to erase your dds-1 tape. Drivers sometimes set the wrong (or at least not the best) error code.
IIRC, DDS-1 tapes are very easy to destroy since they can't read past the end of data.
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/nrmt0h
should do it.
Cheers Perderabo,
Using dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/nrmt0h obs=516
Works without error and gives the result
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
Sadly however the contents of the tape can still be read.
What command do you use to read the tape? Since you say the tape can be read, please post the command you used (in your post above) to read it, thanks.
Neo,
We were ....
@ 06:47
MessageVdump to write the tape
Vrestore to read it
later on ...
@ 07:07
MessageCam
I had a trawl of the internet.
Looks like the scu (SCSI Utility program) is the way to go
scu -f /dev/nrmt0h mt erase
I am testng, looks like it is working, take a long time though.
Jim
I hate and love how there are sooo many ways to skin these cats.
Not withstanding that we've found one solution, what other way could we have solved this??