From: Jenny Butler (jbutler@utmem.edu)
Date: Tue May 07 2002 - 13:49:06 EDT
Thanks to list members for the quick responses. I heard from Alan
(@nabeth...),
Steve Feehan, Bob Bumpus, and Lucien Hercaud (who even supplied a command
line) - all indicating that using the dd utility and /dev/zero as the input
should work.
The command line I used was dd -if=/dev/zero -of=/dev/ntape/tape0_d0 bs=64k
with the 64k from Lucien's suggestion.
I put in one of the DLT3 tapes in the TZ877 and timed the process. It
took
approximately 2 hours to run the length of the tape (83,000+ blocks per the
mt
rdpos command) and appears to have done basically what I was doing with
the VMS INIT/ERASE command.
As several commented, that is not an efficient method for mass
initialization of
tapes. I had a hardware problem on my TZ877 compounded by either an
occasional bad tape (bad spot on a tape) and potentially the tape drive
messing
up a tape. This effort was for testing my tape drive as well as learning
how.
Thanks again for the help!
Jenny
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jenny Butler" <jbutler@utmem.edu>
To: <tru64-unix-managers@ornl.gov>
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 3:32 PM
Subject: Erasing DLT Tapes
> Using Tru64 Unix v5.1 I have a TZ877 tape unit attached to my ES40 via
scsi
> cable/card. I have tried several things to erase and test a scratch tape
that I
> suspect might be bad. I tried various tapex tests and cannot verify that
I have
> tested the entire tape. I tried the scu mt erase command and it ran for
about
> 5-6 hours when I finally killed it. I tried the scu mt retension command
and
> it finished in about .08 seconds - not long enough for the tape to wind
from
> one end to the other.
> On VMS, I could use INITIALIZE/ERASE on the same tapes and this writes
> binary zeroes to the entire tape - for this DLT III tape it ran 2 hrs, 15
> minutes per tape.
> Short of writing a program or script to write binary zeroes to a tape, has
anyone
> found the right command and qualifiers to test an entire tape and know
that
> you got the whole thing?
> Thanks, Jenny Butler
> jbutler@utmem.edu
>
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