A tape drive is like one big file. So listing the contents is like listing the contents of an archive file: you feed the data from the tape drive device into the archiving program that was used, and tell it to list the contents.
If the tape was written with tar: # tar tvf /dev/sa0
A tape can actually hold more than one file, with index marks between them, and the sa(4) device rewinds the tape when the device is closed. So in the example above, you'll only see the listing of the first section of the tape. You can use mt(1) to move between index marks, but you also have to use the non-rewind version of the sa device, "/dev/nsa0", to prevent rewinding.
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