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Veritas NetBackup™ Device Configuration Guide

Last Published: 2018-02-16

Product(s): NetBackup (8.1.1, 8.1)

Using multiple tape densities on AIX

After you create the device files for your tape drives, you can configure densities on the drives that support multiple densities. Exabyte 8500C is an example of a tape drive for which you can use different densities.

AIX supports two configuration settings for density, although not all tape drives support multiple densities. The default density for both density setting 1 and density setting 2 is 0, which means maximum density.

The following procedure is an example of using the chdev command to modify the density settings. Alternatively, you can use the System Manager Interface Tool (SMIT).

To modify the density settings

The following commands modify both of the tape drive device files:
```
chdev -l tapedev -a density_set_1=density
```
```
chdev -l tapedev -a density_set_2=density
```
The following describe the arguments to the command options:
- tapedev is the logical identifier for the drive, such as rmt0 or rmt1.
- density is a decimal number from 0 to 255 that represents the wanted density. Zero (0) selects the default density for the tape drive, which is usually the drive's high density setting. Permitted values and their meanings vary with different types of tape drives.
To use density setting 1, use the following no rewind on close device file when you configure the device in NetBackup:
```
/dev/rmt*.1
```
To use density setting 2, use the following no rewind on close device file when you configure the device in NetBackup:
```
/dev/rmt*.5
```