at first we open an Terminal Session:

In the demonstration, we show how to identify the device names in Linux using

Dmesg |grep scsi

And then use mtx command to load and unload tape and query the inventory of the tape libraries. Once the tapes are loaded we use tar to read and write data and mt to check the status of the drives.

The mtx commands are

--- note: replace sg2 with the device name identified from

dmesg mtx f /dev/sg2

--status -- reports back slot status.

mtx -f /dev/sg2 unload 10 -- unloads drive 0 to slot 10

--Status

mtx -f /dev/sg2

--The tar commands are

tar -cvf /dev/st0 *.txt 

--create a tar archive on tape device 0 of all txt files

tar -tvf /dev/sto

– list files on the tape

tar -xvf /dev/st0

– restore files back from tape to the current directory