What is hp-tape-tools?

This repository contains three small, self-contained Python tools for people who manage HP and HPE tape hardware. Magnetic tape is still used in data centers and archival environments, and the software that vendors originally shipped for their tape equipment often disappears long before the hardware does. These tools fill three specific gaps without requiring any external libraries. The first tool is an LTO Cartridge Memory decoder. LTO tape cartridges contain a small chip that stores metadata about the tape: who made it, how many times it has been loaded and unloaded, its health counters, and importantly, where the end of recorded data sits on the tape. That last piece of information matters when you are trying to recover data from a cartridge and need to know exactly how far the recording extends. This tool reads a memory dump you have already obtained from your drive and displays all of that information in readable form. The second tool is a SCSI sense decoder. SCSI is a low-level communication standard that tape drives use to report errors and status. When something goes wrong, the drive produces a sense buffer, which is a block of raw bytes that encodes the problem. Without documentation, this output is unreadable. The tool translates a raw sense buffer or a shorthand error code into plain descriptions of what went wrong and offers recovery hints. The third tool generates temporary front-panel service passwords for HP tape libraries and autoloaders. These devices have a physical display and keypad for local administration. If the admin password has been lost, HP's documented recovery method involves entering a time-based temporary password. This tool computes that password for a given date and hour, so you can get back into a locked library you own or administer. It is available in both Python and Node.js. All three tools work on Python 3.7 or newer with no additional packages to install. The library password tool also has a Node.js version. The README is clear that these are intended for use on hardware you own.