(no subject)

[Bob Gorman]

At 07:20 AM 6/17/2004, Cole Tuininga wrote:
>I've set up a SCSI tape drive on a system.  The drive is a SONY AIT
>*mumble mumble* on a symbios based card.  The problem is that on a
>somewhat frequent basis, the tape drive "locks up".  
>
>By "locks up", I mean that the current mt command (seemingly always
>"erase") runs forever.  I have to reboot the system to get rid of the mt
>process, and then power cycle the tape drive to make it work again.  If
>I don't power cycle the tape drive, all mt commands will just hang and
>not even respond to a kill -9.
>
>Any thoughts?

With large capacity tapes an erase can take a long time. Listen to the drive or look at the activity lights to tell that it is working.  If so try letting it run for a few of hours and it should finish.

When you interrupt the erase operation it will probably do a rewind, which will also take some time.

I don't do use erase any more for preparing tapes, just retention.

If the drive is indeed locking up, look at SCSI issues next - termination enabled, termination power, sync vs async operation, channel speed, etc...

Also make sure you have the latest bios/firmware for the controller card and tape unit.

Also get the sonytape test utility and play with that for clues.

http://sony.storagesupport.com/ait/downloads/readme_sonytape_linux_v1.9.txt


-- 

I create custom Linux business solutions in the Boston area.
mailto:bob(at)rsi.com, http://www.rsi.com/, 617.965.1700