The Ftape Installation and Usage Guide - Ioctls
MTIOCGET, query the tape drive status
Please read also the man page of the mt program (`mt 1 ftmt')(1). The
following is from the standard Linux include file
[/usr/src/linux/]include/linux/mtio.h:
/* structure for MTIOCGET - mag tape get status command */
struct mtget {
long mt_type; /* type of magtape device */
long mt_resid; /* residual count: (not sure)
* number of bytes ignored, or
* number of files not skipped, or
* number of records not skipped.
*/
/* the following registers are device dependent */
long mt_dsreg; /* status register */
long mt_gstat; /* generic (device independent) status */
long mt_erreg; /* error register */
/* The next two fields are not always used */
__kernel_daddr_t mt_fileno; /* number of current file on tape */
__kernel_daddr_t mt_blkno; /* current block number */
};
The fields mt_dsreg and mt_erreg were unused by
ftape-2.x and sftape whereas ftape-3.04d (and later versions) uses them to store the
last queried hardware tape drive status and error
code. ftape defines for this purpose the following two unions in
[/usr/src/ftape-4.04/]include/linux/ftape.h.
The meaning should be quite clear. The components contain the bits
returned by the respective QIC report commands (refer to the
QIC-117 standard, QIC organisations home page).
/* the following two may be reported when MTIOCGET is requested ... */
typedef union {
struct {
__u8 error;
__u8 command;
} error;
long space;
} ft_drive_error;
typedef union {
struct {
__u8 drive_status;
__u8 drive_config;
__u8 tape_status;
} status;
long space;
} ft_drive_status;
(1) You can download it as part of the ftape-tools package from the
Ftape home page
or from ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes/
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