DLT tape drive issues.
I'm a little lost here, guys. I just got handed a Gateway server with FC3. Everything is configured now and working properly, except the SCSI 2 DLT tape drive. I'm running into some really strange stuff with this guy. Now, bear with me, because I've never really had to work with SCSI, so I'm a little clueless beyond the basics. Here's the basic deal. /dev/tape is a soft link to /dev/nst0 (permissions on both are wide open). The following has been tried with both the softlink and the actual device as targets. The drive responds to basic mt commands. I can load, eject, rewind and fast forward. I can write to the tape just fine. I've used tar, successfully to the best of my knowledge, as well as a really nifty tool called FlexBackup. When using FlexBackup, I've successfully created and read an table of contents. When I actually try to read the data, be it with the FlexBackup tool or simply doing $ tar -tvf /dev/tape, I get errors. Below the cut are outputs of several relevant commands as well as a /var/log/messages snippet which means absolutely zero to me.
[root@Azalin] ~ $ mt status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=1, block number=1, partition=0.
Tape block size 10240 bytes. Density code 0x1b (DLT 35GB).
Soft error count since last status=3
General status bits on (1010000):
ONLINE IM_REP_EN
[root@Azalin] ~ $ tar -tvf /dev/tape
tar: /dev/tape: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
This is the command to read the table of contents with its output
[root@Azalin] ~ $ flexbackup -toc
flexbackup version 1.2.1 (http://flexbackup.sourceforge.net)
/etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Checking /bin/sh on this machine... bash1
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Found index key 200502151852, next file is 2
|------------------------------------------------------------
File Contents (tape index 200502151852)
---------------------------------------------
0 [tape index key]
1 level 0 numlockx-1.0 Tue Feb 15 18:53:26 2005 afio+gzip from Azalin
This is a list command to flexbackup, which I'm pretty sure shows the actual *nix commands it's trying to execute.
Using dd directly returns exactly the same error
[root@Azalin] ~ $ flexbackup -list
flexbackup version 1.2.1 (http://flexbackup.sourceforge.net)
/etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Checking /bin/sh on this machine... bash1
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Logging output to "flexbackup.list.200502152040.log"
| Reading from CURRENT TAPE POSITION
|------------------------------------------------------------
At block 0.
|------------------------------------------------------------
| dd ibs=10k obs=10k conv=noerror if="/dev/nst0" | afio -t -z -D \
| /usr/bin/flexbackup -P gzip -Q -d -Q -q -Z -v -b 10k -
|------------------------------------------------------------
dd: reading `/dev/nst0': Input/output error
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
dd: reading `/dev/nst0': Input/output error
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
|------------------------------------------------------------
At block 1.
The lest 3 lines repeat indefinitely, with the following message being dumped to /var/log/messages every time
Feb 15 20:41:11 localhost kernel: sym0: SCSI parity error detected: SCR1=3 DBC=11000fe2 SBCL=ae
Feb 15 20:41:11 localhost kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current st0: sense key Aborted Command
Feb 15 20:41:11 localhost kernel: Additional sense: Initiator detected error message received
The tape drive worked fine under Windows 2K Server. The media is the same we were using under Windows and it was working fine. Any other information that you may need I'll be more than happy to provide. As always, thanks in advance.
[root@Azalin] ~ $ mt status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=1, block number=1, partition=0.
Tape block size 10240 bytes. Density code 0x1b (DLT 35GB).
Soft error count since last status=3
General status bits on (1010000):
ONLINE IM_REP_EN
[root@Azalin] ~ $ tar -tvf /dev/tape
tar: /dev/tape: Cannot read: Input/output error
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
This is the command to read the table of contents with its output
[root@Azalin] ~ $ flexbackup -toc
flexbackup version 1.2.1 (http://flexbackup.sourceforge.net)
/etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Checking /bin/sh on this machine... bash1
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Found index key 200502151852, next file is 2
|------------------------------------------------------------
File Contents (tape index 200502151852)
---------------------------------------------
0 [tape index key]
1 level 0 numlockx-1.0 Tue Feb 15 18:53:26 2005 afio+gzip from Azalin
This is a list command to flexbackup, which I'm pretty sure shows the actual *nix commands it's trying to execute.
Using dd directly returns exactly the same error
[root@Azalin] ~ $ flexbackup -list
flexbackup version 1.2.1 (http://flexbackup.sourceforge.net)
/etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Checking /bin/sh on this machine... bash1
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Logging output to "flexbackup.list.200502152040.log"
| Reading from CURRENT TAPE POSITION
|------------------------------------------------------------
At block 0.
|------------------------------------------------------------
| dd ibs=10k obs=10k conv=noerror if="/dev/nst0" | afio -t -z -D \
| /usr/bin/flexbackup -P gzip -Q -d -Q -q -Z -v -b 10k -
|------------------------------------------------------------
dd: reading `/dev/nst0': Input/output error
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
dd: reading `/dev/nst0': Input/output error
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
|------------------------------------------------------------
At block 1.
The lest 3 lines repeat indefinitely, with the following message being dumped to /var/log/messages every time
Feb 15 20:41:11 localhost kernel: sym0: SCSI parity error detected: SCR1=3 DBC=11000fe2 SBCL=ae
Feb 15 20:41:11 localhost kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current st0: sense key Aborted Command
Feb 15 20:41:11 localhost kernel: Additional sense: Initiator detected error message received
[root@Azalin] ~ $ /sbin/lsmod Module Size Used by st 39133 0 md5 8001 1 ipv6 236897 14 parport_pc 29701 1 lp 15405 0 parport 37129 2 parport_pc,lp autofs4 21829 0 sunrpc 135077 1 video 19653 0 button 10577 0 battery 13253 0 ac 8773 0 ohci_hcd 24277 0 i2c_piix4 12113 0 i2c_core 24513 1 i2c_piix4 e100 35905 0 mii 8641 1 e100 floppy 56913 0 dm_snapshot 20709 0 dm_zero 6465 0 dm_mirror 24861 2 ext3 117961 2 jbd 57177 1 ext3 dm_mod 57925 6 dm_snapshot,dm_zero,dm_mirror aic7xxx 153465 1 sym53c8xx 73689 2 scsi_transport_spi 17473 1 sym53c8xx sd_mod 20545 5 scsi_mod 116161 5 st,aic7xxx,sym53c8xx,scsi_transport_spi,sd_mod
The tape drive worked fine under Windows 2K Server. The media is the same we were using under Windows and it was working fine. Any other information that you may need I'll be more than happy to provide. As always, thanks in advance.
