Re: st(4) and mt eom

[Adrian Bocaniciu <adrian%bocaniciu.ro@localhost>]

On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 20:08:17 +0100
Frank Kardel <kardel%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:

> This seems to be a long standing deficiency of the driver. Looking at 
> the SCSI spec it is recommended to issue a READ POSITION command
> 
> get the current position. Looking at the spec and code it should be 
> possible to handle the SP_EOM case better with respect to the position 
> information


I suggest that you should look at what FreeBSD does for the command:
mt locate -e

I have not attempted to use NetBSD with a tape, but I am using FreeBSD with an LTO-7 drive and "mt locate -e" works flawlessly.

I always follow that command in my scripts with a "mt rdspos", to verify that it worked correctly, by comparing the result with the last written position on that tape (the position after "mt locate -e" should be the position read after writing the previous last file + 1).

Best regards !