[rescue] mt erase

[Lord Doomicus]

On May 9, 2007, at 4:25 PM, Kevin Foote wrote:

> hi all
> i figured there is enough old *nix knowledge on this list to post this
> question.
>
> im wondering what the mt erase option actually does? does it write  
> zeros
> till the tape end ??
>
> is this a valid way to erase tapes for further use by a separate  
> department
> within the same organization?? a degausser would be nice but we dont
> want to spring for one .. :-) hence my maybe solution of mt erase

I've erased tapes using  dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/mt0 bs=<block size  
of tape> count=<number of blocks on tape>

if you don't have /dev/random ( not on a lot of older platforms ),  
you should be able to use /dev/zero.

This trick works for disks too.  But that command is to dangerous and  
when improperly used, this command is worse than rm -rf /*.

- Derrik

Derrik Walker v2.0, RHCE
lorddoomicus at mac.com
http://www.doomd.net

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!