Unix Settings
Configuring for Linux
51
Configuring for Linux
Finding Existing SCSI Controllers and Devices
Before installing the LTO-2 half-height tape drive, ensure that the requisite SCSI controllers and
device drivers are installed on your system.
To find existing SCSI controllers execute the command:
dmesg | grep SCSI
You may see output similar to:
(scsi0)<Adaptec AHA-294XX Ultra2 SCSI host
adapter> found at PCI 0/16/0
To find existing SCSI devices execute the command:
cat /proc/scsi/scsi
You may see output similar to:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 0 Id:6 Lun:00
Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ULTRIUM06242-XXX
Type: SequentialAccess ANSI SCSI
Revision 03
Use the output of these two commands to see which SCSI target id numbers are free. In the above
example a tape drive is attached at target id 6. SCSI ID #7 is almost always dedicated to the SCSI
controller. Never configure your target device for ID 7 unless you are absolutely sure that the control-
ler is not addressed for ID 7.
The widely available distributions of Linux automatically install the proper SCSI and tape device driv-
ers. If you executed the
cat
command above, you have ensured that the SCSI driver for your con-
troller is installed. To view currently loaded modules, execute the
lsmod
command. Ensure that one
of the entries is
st
.
To view the st device number for your attached tape drive, execute the command:
dmesg | grep tape
You should see output similar to:
Detected SCSI tape st0 and scsi0 . . .
Using the LTO-2 Half-Height Drive
The LTO-2 half-height drive can be configured via the
mt
command options and a default configura-
tion can be setup using the ‘
stsetoptions
’ command from within the mt command. Refer to the
man page for
mt
for details. We suggest not using the erase command nor commands which
attempt to partition the tape. Partitioning is not supported in the LTO format.
For commands that use density and tape size settings, the tape density is 124,000 bpi and the tape
length is 1800 feet. For commands that use a blocking factor, we suggest a factor of 128.
