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Tape I/O

  Several tape drives (1/2 inch, QIC, 8mm, DAT) are available on the UNIX system. They can be accessed from any UNIX workstation on the network. The step by step procedure is as follows:

  1. Login on a UNIX workstation.
  2. Run MIDAS with inmidas.
  3. Mount your tape on a drive connected (see below). If you want to write on the tape remember to enable writing.
  4. Use the intape and outtape commands to access the tape unit using the logical device name e.g. tape0. or the physical device name e.g. /dev/nrst0 or ws1:/dev/nrst0 for a tape unit on remote host ws1. Since the recording density for UNIX tape units is defined by their name, the device name will overrule the density given on the command line! Some 1/2 inch drives require the density to be set manually on the drive as well. During reading the tape drive will itself sense the tape density used. Thus, the generic tape name can normally be given when reading.
  5. Dismount your tape from the drive so that others can use it.
  6. Logout from MIDAS with bye and from the workstation.

Concerning the usage of tape media please note the folowing:

  1. Tape drives can be selected from any host in the same domain. To get access to drives in other domains you need to have another account with the same name in the remote domain.
  2. Tape devices have to be accessed via theirs system names;
  3. The temporary register accounts used by visitors belong to domain eso.
  4. New tapes are from factory write enable.
  5. Tapes can be obtained from the operator, room 220/1, 2nd floor.
  6. The MIDAS error Permision denied occurs when the given tape is write protected (check remarks below) or when it is allocated to another user (use deallocate command)
  7. Concerning 1/2 inch tapes:
  8. Concerning 8mm tapes:
  9. Concerning QIC tapes:
  10. Concerning DAT tapes:



next up previous contents index
Next: Operating Systems Up: Hardware Setup Previous: Processing of Film



Rein Warmels
Mon Jan 22 12:06:29 MET 1996