xref: /dragonfly/share/man/man4/mtio.4 (revision 2ee85085)
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2.\"	Mike Pritchard <mpp@FreeBSD.org>.  All rights reserved.
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35.\"     @(#)mtio.4	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/5/93
36.\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/mtio.4,v 1.8.2.6 2001/08/17 13:08:38 ru Exp $
37.\" $DragonFly: src/share/man/man4/mtio.4,v 1.3 2005/03/05 16:10:39 hmp Exp $
38.\"
39.Dd March 5, 2005
40.Dt MTIO 4
41.Os
42.Sh NAME
43.Nm mtio
44.Nd FreeBSD magtape interface
45.Sh DESCRIPTION
46The special files
47named
48.Pa /dev/[nr]sa*
49refer to SCSI tape drives,
50which may be attached to the system.
51.Pa /dev/[nr]sa*.ctl
52are control devices that can be used to issue ioctls to the SCSI
53tape driver to set parameters that are required to last beyond the
54unmounting of a tape.
55.Pp
56.Pp
57The rewind devices automatically rewind
58when the last requested read, write or seek has finished, or the end of the tape
59has been reached.
60The letter
61.Ql n
62is usually prepended to
63the name of the no-rewind devices.
64.Pp
65Tapes can be written with either fixed length records or variable length
66records.  See
67.Xr sa 4
68for more information.  Two end-of-file markers mark the end of a tape, and
69one end-of-file marker marks the end of a tape file.
70If the tape is not to be rewound it is positioned with the
71head in between the two tape marks, where the next write
72will over write the second end-of-file marker.
73.Pp
74All of the magtape devices may be manipulated with the
75.Xr mt 1
76command.
77.Pp
78A number of
79.Xr ioctl 2
80operations are available
81on raw magnetic tape.
82Consult
83.Aq Pa sys/mtio.h
84P
85for further information.
86.Sh FILES
87.Bl -tag -width /dev/[nr]sa* -compact
88.It Pa /dev/[nr]sa*
89.El
90.Sh SEE ALSO
91.Xr mt 1 ,
92.Xr tar 1 ,
93.Xr sa 4
94.Sh HISTORY
95The
96.Nm
97manual appeared in
98.Bx 4.2 .
99An i386 version first appeared in
100.Fx 2.2 .
101.Sh BUGS
102The status should be returned in a device independent format.
103.Pp
104The special file naming should be redone in a consistent and understandable
105manner.
106