No need to erase the tape. Just use mt to position the tape at the beginning (rewind) and start writing with tar, cpio, dump, etc. If you are using some special backup software it should give you the controls for doing this. On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 07:41:07PM +0100, Iain Gray wrote:

It seems to be hanging for at least 4 hours, but I will try leaving it for about 8 hours just to be sure.

In the meantime, is there another, quicker command for freeing up space on a tape? I rotate backup tapes and would like to overwrite the data on them , but don't fancy waiting that long every day!

Iain

...

-----Original Message----- From: malusek@photon.raf.imv.liu.se [mailto:malusek@photon.raf.imv.liu.se]On Behalf Of Alexandr Malusek Sent: 23 June 2001 22:48 To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] mt -erase hang

"Iain Gray" writes:

...

Whenever I use most mt commands, i get no problem at all, and I can tar a file to the tape with no problem and retrieve it, but whenever I try to erase the tape with mt -erase, the tape drive light flashes, and then the command just hangs there, doing nothing.

The "erase" operation usually takes very long time (at least couple of hours for the Tandberg SLR 100 tape drive). I would feel a bit worried if it took more than 6 hours, otherwise I would just wait if the light kept flashing.

-- Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se

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