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MT(1) General Commands Manual MT(1)

mt — magnetic tape manipulating program

mt [-f tapename] command [count]

mt ~ is used to give commands to a magnetic tape drive. By default mt performs the requested operation once. Operations may be performed multiple 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.

, weof
Write count end-of-file marks at the current position on the tape.
Forward space count files.
Forward space count records.
Back space count files.
Back space count records.
Rewind the tape (Count is ignored).
, rewoffl
Rewind the tape and place the tape unit off-line (Count is ignored).
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.

If the following environment variable exists, it is utilized by mt.

mt ~ checks the TAPE environment variable if the argument tapename is not given.

/dev/rmt*
Raw magnetic tape interface

dd(1), ioctl(2), environ(7)

The mt command appeared in 4.3BSD.

BSD 4 June 6, 1993 MT(1)