Very Computer

        Well, I just popped for a used SCSI tape backup unit but am having a
hell of a time with it... hehe

Can anyone help me with some problems here? I can see during bootup
that the kernal sees the device, reports it, says that it is on the
right ID, the adaptec seems to like it, but when I try to access , I
can't. I have tried using tar to pipe it to the /dev/rst0 device, the
nrst0 device... I have even tried sdc and sdc1 but to no avail... I
don't get it. I tried a couple of buddies scripts which use cpio but
that doesn't work either. The drive is a Wangtek  Legacy 500s which is
supposed to be a 1/4 inch, 1 gig drive but who can tell until I can
get it going... ;)

I tried sunsite but cannot find support there for scsi tape backups,
but found all kinds for such backups as Colorado, or other qic40 and
qic80 formats.

I feel so alone... ;)

Thanks in advance for any help you may offer me with this... could
replies come through email as well? I have a hard time keeping up with
the high amount of traffic in this area(although I try my best, hehe)

Later!

Steve Tupy
CompuData Systems
Oshawa, Canada.

Web - www.thecds.com
Home of Base Runner, Userstat, The Enforcer, SpotChek etc...

Quote:>    Well, I just popped for a used SCSI tape backup unit but am having a
>hell of a time with it... hehe

End of Tape: Please Insert new tape and press Enter

        But the tape is rewound! Then I look in my logs and see these lines...

Sep 16 15:39:21 waldo kernel: st0: Error 28000000. Extra data not
valid Current error st0: sense key not Ready
Sep 16 15:39:22 waldo kernel: st0: Error on write filemark

        Ok, so now I am really stumped!... as before, while booting, it sees
the device ok, and now when I run the script , it accesses the drive
ok, but I get this error, but only after about 10 mins of waiting
while my drives are grinding away...

I hope this helps a bit more to get to this problem. I am sure that it
can be fixed. While I am here, tell me, do some of these tape programs
I see on sunsite work with scsi tapes? I thought they were only for
IDE or floppy based tape drives such as Colorado etc... if they do
work, maybe that could solve my problem?

Again, any help is appreciated!

Take care!

Steve Tupy
CompuData Systems
Oshawa, Canada.

Web - www.thecds.com
Home of Base Runner, Userstat, The Enforcer, SpotChek etc...

:       Well, I just popped for a used SCSI tape backup unit but am having a
: hell of a time with it... hehe

: Can anyone help me with some problems here? I can see during bootup
: that the kernal sees the device, reports it, says that it is on the
: right ID, the adaptec seems to like it, but when I try to access , I
: can't. I have tried using tar to pipe it to the /dev/rst0 device, the
: nrst0 device... I have even tried sdc and sdc1 but to no avail... I
: don't get it. I tried a couple of buddies scripts which use cpio but
: that doesn't work either. The drive is a Wangtek  Legacy 500s which is
: supposed to be a 1/4 inch, 1 gig drive but who can tell until I can
: get it going... ;)

: I tried sunsite but cannot find support there for scsi tape backups,
: but found all kinds for such backups as Colorado, or other qic40 and
: qic80 formats.

You probably do not have scsi tape support compiled into your kernel.
The drive will be detected at boot even if you do not have this support.
You need to re-compile with scsi tape support or you can use the st.o
module if you're set up to use installable modules.

--
Brian E.W. Wood

"Would you put your money in a bank which used Windows '95 to manage accounts?"

Okay, since the tape drive appears during boot, I assume the kernel was
built to support it.

Next, what exactly do you have? Make, model ...

Next, check /dev, and make sure the tape devices have the proper
major/minor numbers. (ie: st0 = 9,0 for 1st tape unit, nst0 = 9,128)
(instead of size, you should see 9,   0 when you do an ls -ial)

If you look at /dev/rst0, does it have major/minor numbers, or was it a
plain file, in which case it should be huge as a tar /dev/rst0 to a
none-device file is the same as tarring to a file.

BTW, major/minor assignments can be found in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt

--------------------------------------------------------------
       All typos Copyright 1960-1996 Ian V. Quickmire        

--------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:>You probably do not have scsi tape support compiled into your kernel.
>The drive will be detected at boot even if you do not have this support.
>You need to re-compile with scsi tape support or you can use the st.o
>module if you're set up to use installable modules.

Take care!

Steve Tupy
CompuData Systems
Oshawa, Canada.

Web - www.thecds.com
Home of Base Runner, Userstat, The Enforcer, SpotChek etc...

find . -print|cpio -ocvB >/dev/rmt0

To load the tape I use the following.

cpio -icvBd </dev/rmt0

My tape unit is a SCSI DAT drive connected to an UltraStor 14F control
but the commands listed above should work with any SCSI tape device.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Joe Condon

Hi Steve;  I may be having a similar problem.  

I recently installed linux and everything seems to be
working ok (more or less).  It came up just fine and seems to find all
my hardware (SCSI CD, Disk and 8mm exabyte tape).  The CD mounts ok,
the disk seems just fine but when I do a tar -t st0 on a tape that
worked fine on  freeBSD I get "tar:read error on /dev/nst0 : I/O
error"  the nst0 confuses me a bit as I thought the 8mm would be st0
and not nst0.  I tried tar -t, tar -t /dev/st0, tar -t /dev/nst0, tar
-t nst0, tar -t st0  on a tape that worked ok in bsd when I had BSD on
this machine.  When I issue the tar command I hear the drive spin and
move the tape so it is hitting the device.  

The machine is a 486/66 with 16meg ram and two scsi drives.  The first
drive has win95 and the second drive has the linux partition.  I use
lilo to select with to boot.  This way there is NO conflict on the
drives with the two os's.  The 8mm drive works just fine in win95 (I
backed up a network connected NT machine last night with the drive in
win95, good backup and compare on 3+gigs).

thanks...marshal

Reposting article removed by rogue canceller.

find . -print|cpio -ocvB >/dev/rmt0

To load the tape I use the following.

cpio -icvBd </dev/rmt0

My tape unit is a SCSI DAT drive connected to an UltraStor 14F control
but the commands listed above should work with any SCSI tape device.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Joe Condon

xTry starting evrrything with the command:-

"mt setblk 0".

Quote:>Okay, since the tape drive appears during boot, I assume the kernel was
>built to support it.

Quote:>Next, what exactly do you have? Make, model ...

I would like to personally thank everyone for all the help I
recieved... It impressed the hell out of me the amount of support this
community has to offer. Only hope I can give some back... ;)

Best regards!

Steve Tupy
CompuData Systems
Oshawa, Canada.

Web - www.thecds.com
Home of Base Runner, Userstat, The Enforcer, SpotChek etc...

This problem is a problem with FreeBSD's tape driver. You
have to set the tape drives block size to variable.
the command should be
mt /dev/st0 setblk 0
or sth similar. This should cure this problem.
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Bora Aydin Akyol
STARLab, Department of Electrical Engineering,
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
http://wireless.stanford.edu/~akyol/

------------------------------------------------------------

- hg

|>
|
|> > the disk seems just fine but when I do a tar -t st0 on a tape that
|> > worked fine on  freeBSD I get "tar:read error on /dev/nst0 : I/O
|> > error"  the nst0 confuses me a bit as I thought the 8mm would be st0
|
|I think you shouldn't say 'tar -t st0'. Did you try 'tar -tf /dev/st0' ?
|the /dev/nst0 device is the no rewind tape device.  this seems to be the
|default device when the -f switch is omitted to tar.

You can use strings to ferret out the compiled in options:
  strings `which tar` | less

Search for "/dev".

Also, look at "dmesg": "Detected scsi tape ... ".  Prefixed with a
"n" means no rewind.  You can save yourself some typing by using
the "TAPE" variable, I believe both tar and mt use it.  If you're
using bash enter "export TAPE=/dev/nst0" are whatever the correct
device is.

--

[snip]

: Hi

: This problem is a problem with FreeBSD's tape driver. You
: have to set the tape drives block size to variable.
: the command should be
: mt /dev/st0 setblk 0
: or sth similar. This should cure this problem.

Hurm. I'd say that was a borderine feature-ette.
Every other tape driver mostly defaults to variable unless
you are specifically configuring something that only does
fixed (e.g QIC)... it should ideally prod to see if it supports
variable and default to that. Oh well, something to hack this
weekend :-)

cheers,
al
(not speaking for HP..)