> On Wed, 2002-05-01 at 14:19, Cory Visi wrote:
>> I have checked an double-checked and the tapes I use are not
>> write-protected. In fact, when I attempt to label a write-protected
>> tape, I receive the error "Read-only device"
>>
>
> Well, I was thinking more along the lines of:
> <bldlinux71> mt -f /dev/nst0 status
> SCSI 2 tape drive:
> File number=-1, block number=-1, partition=0.
> Tape block size 1024 bytes. Density code 0x0 (default).
> Soft error count since last status=0
> General status bits on (1010000):
> ONLINE IM_REP_EN
>
> If yours said something like "Tape block size 9177 bytes" or such like
> you would get an error 'cause a 32k write (which is what amanda
> generally does) would not be a multiple of the blocksize.
>
> You probalby want to do
> mt -f /dev/nst0 setblk 0
> for variable block mode. There may be some other parameters that are
> keeping that drive from writing a label.
>
> At any rate, you may want to ask a Linux user list rather than
> amanda-users as I don't think the problem you are having is an amanda
> configuration issue, but rather a system one.
Not really... I had a problem like this when initially setting up the thing.
In my case the problem was solved by setting the block size in the st
driver with the 'mt setblk' command to the correct value, or 0 if you want
dynamic block sizes. Then make sure that the filemark size for your
tapedrive definition in the amanda.conf is NOT LARGER than the blocksize
unless you set the blocksize to zero. Also, I saw problems with blocksizes
and filemark sizes that were not powers of 2 (1000 didn't work, 1024 did),
but that could be tapedrive dependent and our tapedrive was faulty, so that
may not be the case with your drive.
I hope this info helps.
Good luck,
Elmar Kolkman
