loaderinfo - report SCSI tape device info

loaderinfo -f <scsi-generic-device>

The loaderinfo command reads various information from SCSI tape loaders. Its intended use is for high-level programs that are trying to decide what the capabilities of a device are.

The following are printed:

Element Address Assignment Page:

This tells how many elements are in the loader, and what their raw hardware addresses are.

Transport Geometry Descriptor Page:

Will display whether media is invertible or not (usable with some optical jukeboxes for detirmining whether to "flip" media after writing to the first side).

Device Capabilities Page

Currently will only display whether we can transfer between slots (i.e. whether 'mtx transfer' works).

Inquiry Page

Aside from the normal inquiry info, will also print out whether we have a bar code reader (for loaders that support the Exabyte extension for reporting presense of said reader).

The first argument, given following -f , is the SCSI generic device corresponding to your tape loader. Consult your operating system's documentation for more information (for example, under Linux these are generally start at /dev/sg0 under FreeBSD these start at /dev/pass0).

Under FreeBSD, 'camcontrol devlist' will tell you what SCSI devices you have, along with which 'pass' device controls them. Under Linux, "cat /proc/scsi/scsi" will tell you what SCSI devices you have. Under Solaris 8, find /devices -name '*changer*' will display the device names for your attached changers. Make sure to configure your 'sgen' driver first.

This program has only been tested on Linux with a limited number of loaders (Ecrix Autopack, Exabyte 220).

loaderinfo is currently being maintained by Eric Lee Green <eric@badtux.org> formerly of Enhanced Software Technologies Inc. The 'mtx' home page is http://mtx.sourceforge.net and the actual code is currently available there and via CVS from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mtx/ .

mt(1),tapeinfo(1),mtx(1)