MT(1) BSD General Commands Manual MT(1)NAME
mt — magnetic tape manipulating program
SYNOPSIS
mt [-f tapename] command [count]
DESCRIPTION
mt ~ is used to give commands to a magnetic tape drive. By default mt
performs the requested operation once. Operations may be performed mul‐
tiple times by specifying count. Note that tapename must reference a raw
(not block) tape device.
The available commands are listed below. Only as many characters as are
required to uniquely identify a command need be specified.
eof, weof Write count end-of-file marks at the current position on the
tape.
fsf Forward space count files.
fsr Forward space count records.
bsf Back space count files.
bsr Back space count records.
rewind Rewind the tape (Count is ignored).
offline, rewoffl
Rewind the tape and place the tape unit off-line (Count is
ignored).
status Print status information about the tape unit.
If a tape name is not specified, and the environment variable TAPE does
not exist; mt uses the device /dev/rmt12.
mt ~ returns a 0 exit status when the operation(s) were successful, 1 if
the command was unrecognized, and 2 if an operation failed.
ENVIRONMENT
If the following environment variable exists, it is utilized by mt.
TAPE mt ~ checks the TAPE environment variable if the argument
tapename is not given.
FILES
/dev/rmt* Raw magnetic tape interface
SEE ALSOdd(1), ioctl(2), environ(7)HISTORY
The mt command appeared in 4.3BSD.
4th Berkeley Distribution June 6, 1993 4th Berkeley Distribution