Hi Folks,
Over the past few days, many reports have been posted concerning issues
with the OnStream DI30 tape drive and the Linux IDE patches.
We have been able to localize the problems to an issue with certain ADR
30 tapes. After running tests on 4 different batch representatives (a
total of 21 tapes), we have discovered that the newest batch of media
consistantly demonstrate the problems of unexpected EOD and lost sectors
that are being reported. Tapes from the older batches, however, do not
exhibit ANY of these problems.
I have reported the batch numbers to the appropriate members of the
OnStream team and we will hopefully see a resolution in the very near
future. Please keep in mind that this problem appears to ONLY be
related to the media, and not the IDE tape driver patch, the Linux
kernel, user applications (tar, BRU, et al), nor the DI-30 drives. And
while changes in the driver may alleviate the problem, those changes
will be made to work around the media problems, not because of problems
in the existing driver code.
Announcements will be made on this list, the OnStream site, and on
LinuxTapeCert.org as soon as more details are available.
--
Tim
