more of DAT

[T Kellers]

I'm currently trying to use a pair of Dell Powervault 120 tape drives.
The drives have a changer magazine in which I load 8 cassettes, one of which 
is the cleaning tape.  I've scripted a dump 0, dump 1 progression for a 
backup rotation that runs for 2 weeks, then a full dump 0, then again with 
the incremental dumps.

When the changer hits the cleaning tape, everything gets stupid.  The 
script/computer/scsi interface can not longer communicate with the drive; I 
can't eject the tape or do anything until I manually select tape 1 (the 
cleaning tape is in position 8) and start the process over.

Is there some mt command I am missing or some other way to communicate with 
the drive while it still has the cleaning tape in it?  I'm trying to get this 
to work without removing the cleaning tape from the magazine, but I don't 
know if it's possible.

FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE

TIA

Tim Kellers
CPE/NJIT