HP LTO Ultrium 6 tape drives UNIX, Linux and OpenVMS configuration guide

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scsi3 : cciss
Vendor: HP Model: Ultrium 6-SCSI Rev: ZxxD
Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 06
scsi 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 1
st: Version 20050830, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
st 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi tape st0
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The tape drive instance identifies which device files are applicable to the tape drive. For example:
• st0 indicates device files /dev/st0 or /dev/nst0
• st1 indicates device files /dev/st1 or /dev/nst1
and so on...
A list of tape device files gets created automatically when the st driver module and the correct
HBA driver have been added. They reside in the /dev/ directory and have the syntax:
/dev/stp or dev/nstp
where:
• p is the instance number of the device file (if only one drive is connected to the system, this
will be 0)
• n Indicates this is a no-rewind driver.
The following is another sample dmesg output showing the hpsa driver:
hpsa 0000:07:00.0: Sequential-Access device c4b2t0l0 added.
scsi 4:2:0:0: Sequential-Access HP Ultrium 5-SCSI X30W PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
scsi 4:2:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 1
st: Version 20081215, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
st 4:2:0:0: Attached scsi tape st0
st 4:2:0:0: st0: try direct i/o: yes (alignment 4 B)
osst :I: Tape driver with OnStream support version 0.99.4
osst :I: $Id: osst.c,v 1.73 2005/01/01 21:13:34 wriede Exp $
Using the seek and tell features of mt
To use the seek and tell features of mt, the st driver needs to be configured for logical block
addressing with HP Ultrium drives.
With some Linux distributions it is possible to do this using the stsetoptions function with mt
utility:
mt -f <devicefile> stsetoptions scsi2logical
where <devicefile> is /dev/stp or /dev/nstp.
Note however that this information is not preserved across reboots, so you need to execute this
command each time the system comes up. Some Linux distributions include the stinit utility,
which offers a convenient way of handling this using the /etc/stinit.def configuration file.
Note that the file /etc/stinit.def may not exist in a new installation and so may need to be
created. See the examples of stinit.def entries in /usr/share/doc/
mt-st-<version>/stinit.def.examples. If you use this approach, set the manufacturer
parameter to HP and the model to “Ultrium 6-SCSI”.
Where stinit is available, you can also re-initialize the drive to new parameters as entered in
/etc/stinit.def without reboot by running:
stinit
Determining the attached devices 15