The intended purpose of this application is to send a symmetric encryption key to an LTO drive for use in encrypting/decrypting data written/read to/from an LTO cartridge.
In the case of new cartridges that already have barcodes applied to them, the barcode is unlikely to be stored in the MAM/LTO-CM chip.
In the case of full tape encryption (i.e. the entire tape is encrypted), the encryption key needs to be set on the drive before the cartridge is formatted. If a cartridge is formatted LTFS and then encrypted, the drive needs to be in mixed mode to be able to read unencrypted data (such as the index file).
When formatting a tape in a drive that isn't part of a tape library, you are asked for the cartridge's barcode.
By being able to scan the barcode on a new cartridge before inserting it into a tape drive, the application can make the barcode available for copying/pasting to the formatting software.
Additionally, once detection of cartridge insertion/removal is added, the application could query the drive to see if the inserted cartridge has been initialised and whether or not a barcode is stored in MAM. If the cartridge doesn't have a barcode stored in MAM, the application could potentially prompt "Blank Barcode: Write scanned barcode to cartridge memory?" and then write the barcode to MAM.
I believe HPE tape formatting software reads the current barcode from MAM and prepopulates the barcode in the prompt, so saving to MAM may negate the copying/pasting step.
Feature Branch
Current feature branch for this issue: not created yet.
Progress
Background
The intended purpose of this application is to send a symmetric encryption key to an LTO drive for use in encrypting/decrypting data written/read to/from an LTO cartridge.
In the case of new cartridges that already have barcodes applied to them, the barcode is unlikely to be stored in the MAM/LTO-CM chip.
In the case of full tape encryption (i.e. the entire tape is encrypted), the encryption key needs to be set on the drive before the cartridge is formatted. If a cartridge is formatted LTFS and then encrypted, the drive needs to be in mixed mode to be able to read unencrypted data (such as the index file).
When formatting a tape in a drive that isn't part of a tape library, you are asked for the cartridge's barcode.
By being able to scan the barcode on a new cartridge before inserting it into a tape drive, the application can make the barcode available for copying/pasting to the formatting software.
Additionally, once detection of cartridge insertion/removal is added, the application could query the drive to see if the inserted cartridge has been initialised and whether or not a barcode is stored in MAM. If the cartridge doesn't have a barcode stored in MAM, the application could potentially prompt "Blank Barcode: Write scanned barcode to cartridge memory?" and then write the barcode to MAM.
I believe HPE tape formatting software reads the current barcode from MAM and prepopulates the barcode in the prompt, so saving to MAM may negate the copying/pasting step.