I've had a DLT7000 tape library for some time now backing up our ageing 540 but I've never been terribly happy with the controls for loading/unloading the library. In order to backup start a backup on a given tape I have to either go to the loaders console and tell it to load the tape or I need to know what tape I am on and give the correct number of "mt -f urst0a status" commands to cycle through to the correct tape. I believe that I could use something other than dump to do the backups but dump is free and does exactly what I want. The problem is compounded that since upgrading the firmware on the tape drive (to allow autocleaning) the mt -f urst0a status trick hasn't worked. Is there a better way? I would've thought that there should be some better drive robotics control functions - have they crept in between 4.3 and 5.x?
FYI I'm running 4.3 connected to a overland dlt7100 drive.
Chris