MT offline doesn't with QICs

[Jim Battan]

I just discovered an interesting aspect to 1/4" QIC tape drives under
SunOS 4.1 (I don't know what happens under prior releases).  Doing an "mt
-f /dev/rst0 offline" turns off the light on the front of the drive, and
you would expect the tape to be unusable until it was removed and inserted
again, but an "mt -f /dev/rst0 asf 1" turns back on the light and does the
operation.

So don't think your tape is safe merely because you did an "offline."

Jim Battan - Sequent Computer Systems
battan at sequent.com or uunet!sequent!battan
+1 503 578 5129