nick <npt at visi.com> wrote:
> 
> hi. so, i'm going completely crazy and i was wondering if someone might
> point me in a direction i haven't tried yet.
> 
> yesterday afternoon:
> 
> mt -f /dev/nst0 erase
> 
> no response. wait a bit. ps tells me it's dead.

Looks like the normal behavior to me.  mt will only print out messages
during/after an erase if there were errors.  It's not dead -- it's waiting
on I/O from the drive.  The drive does the erase on it's own, and will
tell the system when it is done (often hours later).  No, you can't
interrupt it without a reboot (or maybe a paperclip, if your drive has
some manual override mechanism).

For future reference, there isn't much reason to erase a tape before using
it, as far as I know.

-- 
 _  _  _  _ _  ___    _ _  _  ___ _ _  __   Don't confuse me with the 
/ \/ \(_)| ' // ._\  / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__   facts. 
\_||_/|_||_|_\\___/  \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __)                             
[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ]
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