Installing a DLT, SDLT, VS, LTO, or DAT Tape Drive Into a Linux Operating System
6464215-01, Rev B
January 2006
Accessing Devices Using /dev/st* Device Nodes
15
Identifying Device
Modes
0
Each node has four modes. Both the auto-rewind and no-rewind functions
use the same modes.
Creating Device Nodes
0
This section shows each
stinit
mode and its corresponding device node
identification parameters.
The next two sections —
Creating Auto-Rewind Device Nodes
and
Creating
No-Rewind Device Nodes
— show examples of the codes you use to create
device nodes.
The following table shows the numbering you use to identify the first tape
device in each mode. To identify a second tape device, increment the tape
device number and minor number by one, and so on for each successive tape
device. You can have up to 32 tape devices per mode.
Mode
Auto-Rewind
Node
(example)
a
a. The “
0
” in this table is an example representing the device.
In actual practice, this numeric character may be any num-
ber from 0 to 31 depending on the node.
No-Rewind
Node
(example)
Alpha Character
Identification
1
st0
nst0
no character
2
st0l
nst0l
lowercase
l
3
st0m
nst0m
lowercase
m
4
st0a
nst0a
lowercase
a
Mode
Tape Device Number for
first tape device
(increment by one for
each successive device)
Alpha Character
Mode Identifier
Minor Number of first
tape device (increment
by one for each
successive device)
Mode 1 (Auto-Rewind)
0
none
0
Mode 2 (Auto-Rewind)
0
lowercase
l
32
Mode 3 (Auto-Rewind)
0
lowercase
m
64
Mode 4 (Auto-Rewind)
0
lowercase
a
96
Mode 1 (No-Rewind)
0
none
128
Mode 2 (No-Rewind)
0
lowercase
l
160
Mode 3 (No-Rewind)
0
lowercase
m
192
Mode 4 (No-Rewind)
0
lowercase
a
224
