SYNOPSIS
loaderinfo -f <scsi-generic-device>DESCRIPTION
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).
OPTIONS
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.
BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
This program has only been tested on Linux with a limited number of loaders (Ecrix Autopack, Exabyte 220).
AVAILABILITY
loaderinfo is currently being maintained by Robert Nelson <[email protected]> as part of the 'mtx' suite of programs. The 'mtx' home page is http://mtx.sourceforge.net and the actual code is currently available there and via SVN from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mtx.