On Thursday, October 15th, 2026 at 16:04, Arno Lehmann via Bacula-users 
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello Kevin,
> 
> Am 15.10.2026 um 09:25 schrieb Kevin Buckley (Pawsey) via Bacula-users:
> > I have a "Migrate to Tape" job that gets run manually, and copies
> > backups that have been made into a disk-backed store, mounted as
> > /srv/filepools, onto tapes in the IBM TS4300 autochanger.
> >
> > Someone else has been "doing things with it" since I first set
> > things up, but haven't invoked the manual job, so I've just run
> > it, and I've seen it reporting the following:
> >
> > 15-Oct 14:02 mysrvr-sd JobId 1309: Volume "000003L9" previously written, 
> > moving to end of data.
> > 15-Oct 14:03 mysrvr-sd JobId 1309: Error: Unable to position to end of data 
> > on Tape device "TS4300-Drive1" (/dev/IBMtape1n): ERR=tape_dev.c:366 ioctl 
> > MTIOCGET error on "TS4300-Drive1" (/dev/IBMtape1n). ERR=Success.
> 
> It seems you're using the IBM lin_tape driver on this host.
> 
> You should switch back to the standard Linux kernel st one and will find
> things working.


Yes, I have deployed the IBM lin_tape driver.

 
> If you want to use lin_tape due to its features, ...

To be honest, as we purchased an IBM autochanger, the thinking was that
we would need to deploy the IBM lin_tape driver.

The suggestion, that we might not have needed it, is very interesting.


> You also need to plan some time to really verify all this with btape.
> most likely you'll need only a single tape, which simplifies things.

Not sure what you mean by 

 "you'll need only a single tape"

there?


> If you find good settings, anything documented by IBM, or decided to
> just revert back to the st kernel module, please let us know!

Given how long it took IBM to update the driver SRPM, so that it worked
with later Rocky Linux kernels, across the 9.7 to 9.8 update, I'm not
even sure that IBM consider Rocky Linux to be "supported".

All I know, is that I had to keep moving newer kernels "out of the way"
so that the previous driver, which only worked with kernels up to

5.14.0-611.55.1.el9_7.x86_64

remained working, until IBM finally released lin_tape-3.0.73.

For the benefit og anyone else who comes to read this, no; IBM don't 
have an announcement email list for new versions of it: one just has 
to keep "logging into the portal", so as to check for new versions.


I will float the idea, of dropping the IBM lin_tape driver, here, and
see what the thinking is, as we are still to finalise any longer term
backup strategy.


As for "getting rid" of the Tapes/Volumes currently showing as being
in that Error state, presumably they can be Purged, and returned to
the Pool ?

Thanks for the feedback,
Kevin


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