SUMMARY RE: How to determine which tape slot is loaded in the Sun StorEdge tape drive auto-loader?

1. The consensus was to use "mtx" for this purpose.

2. Most people responded with "amanda" as their choice of backup program
(as a freebie that is) and they *have* made it work with mtx.

3. Some people also recommended "bacula" as an alternative to "amanda".

I have downloaded "mtx" and am planning to test it out shortly.
Unfortunately, I am having a different problem configuring the /dev
entry, so will post about that momentarily.

Thanks, everybody!

Z

-----Original Message-----
From: Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain@aeris.net)
Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 5:56 PM
To: sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
Subject: How to determine which tape slot is loaded in the Sun StorEdge
tape drive auto-loader?

Hi, all.

We have a rack-mounted Sun StorEdge DLT tape auto-loader on one of our
Sun systems ... this is used for backups. I am using Solaris 10 standard
ufsdump ... not any controller/backup software of any kind.

It has the 10-slot tape holder (for DLT-3 tapes) on one side (the other
side is empty) and a single HP Ultrium tape drive for DLT-3 tapes.

I can tell when a tape is in the drive using the "mt -f /dev/rmt/0cn
status" command (see below), but have not found a way to determine
*which* slot in the auto-loader that the DLT-3 cartridge came from!

And, no, we do not (as far as I know) have the bar-code reader module on
that auto-loader.

This loader is at a hosting facility some miles away, and (a) I don't
want to drive there every time to check this and (b) I want to automate
some scripts for doing backups and need to know which slot is being
used.

Here is the output from the above command for example (done carefully
with the /dev/rmt/0cn device to avoid having the drive change the tape
cartridge on me!):

system# mt -f /dev/rmt/0cn status
HP Ultrium LTO 3 tape drive:
   sense key(0x0)= No Additional Sense   residual= 0   retries= 0
   file no= 0   block no= 0
system#

Hence my questions:

1. is there a different "device" in the /dev/... directory that I can
use?

2. Or is there some other mt command parameter that gives me this info?

3. Or some other Solaris 10 command that will give me this info?

4. Does the freebie backup program "amanda" manage auto-loaders at all
(or well enough) so that I can use it and it will let me know when I
need to change tapes, etc.?

5. Or, is there some other freebie backup program - with auto-loader
support - that you all would recommend?

Thanks in anticipation, and I will summarize the responses ...
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