[CentOS] Tape drive throughput

[Steve]

Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:

>>But I would be *very* interested to know how you could calculate the 
>>total throughput of a random drive if you *did* know the fixed block size.
>>    
>>
>
>Knowing the blocksize used, I would just tell him to use "mt setblk"
>to the same block size, then use "dump" to dump a random ammount
>of that to the tape. Dump will provide you with the throughtput rate
>you want.
>
>If you don't know the blocksize, or if you are using variable (0),
>you really can't measure it outside the specific application you 
>are using to write the data to the tape.
>
>  
>
Seems like it would be easier to just run it through something like 
buffer, mbuffer, or dbuffer and have one of those report the value 
second by second, in kilobytes per second.

-Steve