Brian,
Thanks for all you input. I'm just getting my feet wet regarding the mysteries
of SCSI and "unix" so the advice of someone with development-grade knowledge is
much appreciated.
The "write-protected" tape problem was due to a defective tape (not the w-p tab
;) ). Just my luck that it was in slot one of the carriage. When I replaced it
the "offline" command started working as expected. This is my "test and
learning" system so I am obliged to do everything on the super-cheap (scavenged
hard drives, tapes, tape drive and free software). My backup worries became
more critical when the upgrade from RH 5.2 to 6.0 failed. Now, I guess I get to
do the backup, reinstall, and try to restore all the stuff that doesn't conflict
with the new install.
Anyway, with some "mt offline" and "tar cvlf" commands, I was able to get
everything on the system to tape. I will try your demos with great interest.
After working with DOS, Windows, Coherent (!), SCO and AIX, I feel like I have a
setup in linux that I can really start to learn how this stuff works on the
inside
Thanks again for your help,
Jon
Brian Geisel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 05/14/99 07:51:06 AM
To: Jonathan S. Polacheck/AUSTIN/THE_FUND@THE_FUND,
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc:
Subject: Re: HP tape drives and RedHat
Hello,
While I don't remember all the in's and out's of this tape changer, there
are some quirks to it. It has a unique way of handling load/unload/offline
requests and actually has two different modes in which it handles them
differently. We actually have an HP SuperStore here as well and our
autochanger program understands how to switch modes on that drive. It will
allow you not only to change tapes and make backups and so forth, but it
has extra support for that drive (just because we had some in-house
problems with it switching modes).
> "mt -f /dev/nst0 load" returns;
>
> /dev/nst0: Input/output error
>
This could just be the way the drive handles the load command, do you have
a tape in currently?
> Attempts to tar a small text file called "test" to the tape drive result
in;
>
> [root@lcompaq /]# tar cvf /dev/nst0 test
> tar: Cannot open /dev/nst0: Read-only file system
> tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
>
> "mt -f /dev/nst0 offline" results in "tape 2" being loaded into the
drive. At
> that point, tar and mt behave as expected.
I hate to say this outloud, but are you sure tape 1 isn't write protected?
Make sure they both have the little tab in the closed position. This
really sounds like the command is giving you the right answer (had to
happen sometime, right)? <G>
>
> I would like to be able to use "tape 1" and eventually to be able to
utilize the
> autoloader capability of the drive. Any suggestions?
Again, I'm biased, but edge.changer (our autoloader program) will really
help you with your problem here, and edge.tape may help you with any SCSI
related problems you may have. There's a evaluation copy which is fully
functional at:
ftp://ftp.microlite.com/demos
There's a libc and a glibc version there, make sure you get the one you
need.
This should help significantly...
geisel -- here comes the "why I'm biased" part :)
Software Engineer
Microlite Corporation -- http://www.microlite.com
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