LTO Tape drive General status bits?

Question

Does anyone, or can anyone point me to the meaning of the general status bits displayed on an lto tape drive status?

[root@server ~]# mt -f /dev/nst0 status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x58 (no translation).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41000000):
 BOT ONLINE

General status bits on (41000000): What do they mean or refer to?

I've found this page but it isn't comprehensive or complete: http://it-div-ds.web.cern.ch/it-div-ds/HO/mt.status.bits.html

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you're on a linux system, you should be able to get the source for the device driver. (Maybe so for other systems also). If you can get that, there is always hope that the DD writer left comments in the code (source or header) about what those status bits mean.

However, reading that page, it seems to mean:

4  BOT       Tape is mounted and is positioned at BOT, beginning of tape (load point, before any VOL1/HDR or data)
1  ONLINE    Tape is mounted and ONLINE (effectively a mounted cartridge is 'READY')

all other bits not set

Answer 2

According to this mt-st repository, the General status bits are:

• EOF : 0x80000000
• BOT : 0x40000000
• EOT : 0x20000000
• SM : 0x10000000 -> DDS setmark
• EOD : 0x08000000 -> DDS EOD
• WR_PROT : 0x04000000 -> The current tape is read-only
• ONLINE : 0x01000000
• D_6250 : 0x00800000 -> for 9 track tape?
• D_1600 : 0x00400000 -> for 9 track tape?
• D_800 : 0x00200000 -> for 9 track tape?
• DR_OPEN : 0x00040000 -> door open (no tape)
• IM_REP_EN : 0x00010000 -> immediate report mode
• CLN : 0x00008000 -> cleaning requested

Note: 15 generic status bits unused.