mt(1)

mt -- portable tape device control

Synopsis

mt [-f tape device] command [count]

Description

The mt command provides rudimentary control of tape drives through an interface that is portable across many different vendors' systems.

The mt command takes the following options:

-f tape drive: This option specifies the target tape drive. The argument tape drive is the pathname of a raw tape device. The ``no-rewind'' interface to the specified tape drive should be used (e.g., /dev/rmt/ntape1). If this option is not included on the command line, mt operates on the system's default tape device.
command: The command argument specifies the tape operation to be performed. Two operations are defined: rewind (rewind the tape) and fsf (forward space one file).
count: This argument specifies the number of times the specified operation is to be done. If the rewind operation is requested, count is ignored. If count is not included on the command line, it defaults to a value of 1.

mt returns ``0'' on successful completion. If command line syntax is incorrect or a command is not recognized, it returns ``1''. If a tape operation fails, it returns ``2''.

Files

/usr/bin/mt

References

tapecntl(1)