Re: Rewind before ejecting?

[Chris Johnson]

Some tape drives must be taken off line before they will eject. my adic 
fastor4000 is on like that. every time  I eject manually I have to issue 
the command "/bin/mt -f /dev/st0 rewoffl" (rewind and take off line). 
some drives don't need thins and can just be given the eject command.
good luck,
chrisj

M3 Freak wrote:

Hello,

I have what may seem like a silly questions, but let me assure you, I 
have absolutely no idea how tape backups work.  I've only just figured 
out why my RH9 system wasn't seeing the tape drive.  Configuring 
amanda and administering it is a whole different thing!

Anyway, my question is basic.  Last night I manually ran "amdump", and 
it completed successfully.  I read the email amanda sent me, and it's 
now waiting for a "new tape".  I know that I have to put in the new 
tape, label it, and then set up cron to run automatically tonight.  
However, before I put in the new tape, should I just issue an "eject" 
command to the drive to spit the tape out, or do I have to rewind it 
before ejecting it? 

I haven't used a tape backup system before, so I don't know what the 
consequences are of rewinding tapes or not before ejecting them.  I 
would very much appreciate suggestions/advice on this.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Kanwar