>***A TAPE ERROR OCCURRED: [[writing filemark: Input/output error]]. First, Amanda is doing nothing more than report to you what the OS told it. So there really was an I/O error of some type someplace. It's unlikely Amanda could cause this (except possibly by tripping some other hardware or software bug).
>This happens with all my tapes. It's a brand new Seagate STT8000N (IDE) >tape drive, and I'm able to use it fine with mt and tar. ... mt and tar do not do things the same way Amanda does, certainly not in the same volume or order, so they often do not make a valid test case. >... I was able to successfully amlabel my tapes, and amcheck >appears to be happy. ... What happens if you try to amlabel one of your already labelled tapes? What happens if you run amcheck with the -w option (warning -- this will rewrite the tape label so only do it on a tape that can stand to be clobbered). You might also try creating a file that is an even multiple of 32 KBytes (e.g. "dd if=/something of=/test-file bs=32k count=100" where /something is smaller than 100*32KBytes), then set up a script with a dozen or so dd's in a row (the first four lines emulate the Amanda label processing): mt -f /dev/whatever rewind dd if=/dev/whatever of=/dev/null bs=32k count=1 mt -f /dev/whatever rewind dd if=/test-file of=/dev/whatever bs=32k count=1 dd if=/test-file of=/dev/whatever bs=32k dd if=/test-file of=/dev/whatever bs=32k dd if=/test-file of=/dev/whatever bs=32k dd if=/test-file of=/dev/whatever bs=32k dd if=/test-file of=/dev/whatever bs=32k dd if=/test-file of=/dev/whatever bs=32k dd if=/test-file of=/dev/whatever bs=32k ... and see how this goes. It's not exactly like what Amanda does, but is closer than simple mt/tar statements. Also, when put in a script like this, it will keep the tape busy. Note that this will clobber the test tape. >... I tried mt rewind beforehand, just to be sure I was at the >beginning of the tape, but that didn't help. ... When it starts, Amanda rewinds the tape, reads the label to make sure it is a valid tape, rewinds, writes a new label then goes into normal processing mode, which is write the tape mark for the previous file then write the header and dump image for this file, repeated as needed. So you don't need to worry about rewinding the tape before running amdump or amflush (or amcheck). >... the >tape runs for a while, and then it just hangs for a hour or so, until >something times out and fails. Sounds like a hardware/cable/controller problem to me. Start jiggling things (yeah, I know, yet another highly technical term :-). If you have enough hardware, try moving the drive to a different controller, swap the cables, etc. >Steve Stanners John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
