On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 02:43:13PM -0500, James D. Freels wrote:
> I think I missed something here.  The response below, where did it come
> from ? (about the sleep delays, etc.)
> 

In an earlier message I noted that after a command like an mt or mtx,
my drive returned control to the caller before it was ready to accept
the next command.  So a sequence like mt rewind; mtx slot 4 might fail
because the rewind was not quite finished.  Thus sleep delays.

Eric suggested, quite correctly, that instead of a sleep for a fixed
time, a script, possibly called mtsync, like this would be better:


    #!<some posix shell>

    TapeDev=${1:-/dev/rmt/0ln}
    Limit=${2:-120}
    cnt=0

    while (( cnt <= Limit ))
    do
        mt -f $TapeDev status > /dev/null 2>&1 && break
        sleep 1
        (( cnt = cnt + 1 ))
    done

    exit $(( cnt > Limit ? 1 : 0 ))


Untested, and assumes "mt status" returns 0 if drive is ready
and non-zero if not.

-- 

Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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