Jon LaBadie wrote:

Checking st.conf entries was going to be one suggestion.  Along with
what does "prtconf -v" report about the drive and what entry it chose
to use for the tape drive.

Now I see an entry for the tape:

                    st (driver not attached)
                        System software properties:
                            name <tape-config-list> length <60>

5'
                            name <IBM-8505> length <40>

0000008c00000001>.

I guess that was probably empty before.

You 'should have been' able to avoid a reboot after by using devfsadm(1m).
That runs at boot time to check devices.  With arguments it can be made
to work on just a class of devices, like disk or tape or ...

Thanks,

        Andy