
StorageWorks SDLT Tape Drive by Compaq Reference Guide
2–9
Operating System Device Drivers
Caldera UnixWare
Caldera UnixWare provides native drive recognition. Supplemental drivers are not
required. The operatinge system defaults to a generic SCSI device and to the default
settings of the tape drive.
The SDLT drive provides compression so that the storage capability for tapes can be
effectively doubled when the SDLT drive has been instructed to turn on compaction.
This is known as hardware compaction and should be used instead of the software
compaction that is sometimes provided by software products.
Verify Compression
The following command returns the current compression setting of the drive:
tapecntl -C /dev/rmt/ctape1
Example of returned data:
Tape Compression = 1
Tape Decompression =1
NOTE:
Tape Decompression will always be set to 1.
Additional tapecntl Commands
•
Retention Tape:
tapecntl -t /dev/rmt/ctape1
•
Rewind Tape:
tapecntl -w /dev/rmt/ctape1
•
Tar Write:
tar cvf /dev/rmt/ctape1 ./largefile
•
Tar Read:
tar xvf /dev/rmt/ctape1
•
DD Write:
dd if=./largefile of=/dev/rmt/ctape1 bs=512
•
DD Read:
dd if=/dev/rmt/ctape1 of=./largefile bs=512