[ale] SCSI tape

[jmills at TGA.com]

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, David Corbin wrote:

> > > I've a SCSI tape drive running on a RedHat 6.0 system.  It works OK, but
> > > I do have one problem.  When I use "mt erase", it "runs forever".  I

> I *THINK* it's forever.  I'll try it again.
> And I DEFINATELY am worried that "kill -9" won't kill it....

If the drive has been told something like "keep erasing till you sense the
end of the tape" on a single command, it can take a while, and no killable
process is involved except a wait on the drive to signal completion.

Is the tape moving? If so, does it seem to be moving at a different speed
than when you issue 'mt rewind' or 'mt retension' commands?

  John Mills, Sr. Software Engineer
  TGA Technologies, Inc.
  100 Pinnacle Way, Suite 140
  Norcross, GA 30071-3633
  e-mail: jmills at tga.com
  Phone: 770-441-2100 ext.124 (voice)
         770-449-7740 (FAX)