Tape Drives

[Just_Johnny]

I've just installed a tape drive on my FreeBSD 7.1 machine. I'm trying to figure out if it even detected it or not.

Could somebody please give me some pointers? :)

[Christopher]

How is the tape drive attached to the system?

Can you post your /var/run/dmesg.boot file, assuming you've booted the system with the tape drive attached?

[tingo]

Check out the mt man page to find out how tape drives will show up in FreeBSD.

[Just_Johnny]

Someone pointing me to the mt program was the help I needed. I'm new to UNIX but I'm slowly learning my way around.

It's my understanding now that IDE tape drives aren't supported for FreeBSD.

Am I wrong?

Buying a SCSI tape drive isn't a practical solution for me so my only option might be building a windows machine for the job. :(

[fronclynne]

IDE tape drives should be handled by atapist . . . which does not seem to have a corresponding man page . . .

AHA! It is under ata(4). They appear to show up as /dev/ast*

And, I (having never owned, nor tried to use, an ata tape drive) have no idea what utility would best interface. does mt barf? dd?

[Just_Johnny]

It's a Seagate Travan 40. I'm going to give it a second shot with the info Fronclynne provided.