topic Re: Recognizing tape drives!! in Operating System - HP-UX

Recognizing tape drives!!

Amit Manna_6 — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 10:48:27 GMT

Hi,

recently we got a problem that Drive 2 is broken. How can we know from the ioscan output which one is Drive 2??or is there any other way to recognize the same.

#ioscan -funC tape
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
======================================================================
tape 3 8/0.2.0 stape CLAIMED DEVICE QUANTUM DLT8000
/dev/rmt/3m /dev/rmt/3mn /dev/rmt/c0t2d0BEST /dev/rmt/c0t2d0BESTn
/dev/rmt/3mb /dev/rmt/3mnb /dev/rmt/c0t2d0BESTb /dev/rmt/c0t2d0BESTnb
tape 1 10/0.2.0 stape CLAIMED DEVICE QUANTUM DLT8000
/dev/rmt/1m /dev/rmt/1mn /dev/rmt/c1t2d0BEST /dev/rmt/c1t2d0BESTn
/dev/rmt/1mb /dev/rmt/1mnb /dev/rmt/c1t2d0BESTb /dev/rmt/c1t2d0BESTnb
tape 2 10/12/5.0.0 stape CLAIMED DEVICE HP C1537A
/dev/rmt/2m /dev/rmt/2mnb /dev/rmt/c4t0d0BESTn /dev/rmt/c4t0d0DDSb
/dev/rmt/2mb /dev/rmt/c4t0d0BEST /dev/rmt/c4t0d0BESTnb /dev/rmt/c4t0d0DDSn
/dev/rmt/2mn /dev/rmt/c4t0d0BESTb /dev/rmt/c4t0d0DDS /dev/rmt/c4t0d0DDSnb

Awaiting for help from anybody!!

Thanks and Regards

Amit Manna

Re: Recognizing tape drives!!

Patrick Wallek — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 11:14:11 GMT

I assume you are talking about Drive #2 in a tape library, right? If that is true, there really is no way to tell from the ioscan output.

You would have to know how the tape library is set up. The library itself should have the drives numbered. If you have a maintenance contract on the drive, just call in the problem and the engineer will know (or at least he/she better know) which one is drive #2 and fix the appropriate one.

Re: Recognizing tape drives!!

Amit Manna_6 — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 16:57:40 GMT

Actually we told the field engineer to replace the drive2. After replacing the drive he told us to conduct a read write test on the drive. In that case in which one should i test?

please let me know

Re: Recognizing tape drives!!

Steven E. Protter — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 19:05:14 GMT

Test them both and make sure both work.

A way to keep track of this stuff is to document your system before it breaks.

Do an ioscan to a file. Print the file. Run some basic tests to figure out which drive is with. Fbackup would be fine.

Then when something is missing you KNOW which drive it is because you can compare current ioscan output which will not have the drive to baseline paper output upon which you have made some notes.

Item #454 on Steve's lists of how to make a sysadmin's live easier. Coming soon in paperback.

SEP

Re: Recognizing tape drives!!

abhijeet_7 — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 08:59:06 GMT

hey amit,
this is abhijeet Kulkarni & i am working
for TIL/BSE project..(hope u remember!!)

i have heard a lot about you...:D

(sorry to post message here..)

regards
abhik
(abhijeet_kulkarni@tatainfotech.com)

Re: Recognizing tape drives!!

Rick Garland — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:32:53 GMT

You can issue 'mt' commands to both DLT tape drives. One of the drives should respond and the other should not.

Simple mt commands that will fsf, rew, offl, etc...

The drive that does not respond is the drive at issue.

Per your ioscan output, you only have 2 DLT drives so not much trail and error work.

Re: Recognizing tape drives!!

lawrenzo — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 20:50:09 GMT

Hello,

From the ioscan you can see 3 tape drives,

Firstly is this hyow many you would expect to see?

There are two DLT8000 drives and a dat drive shown from the ioscan.

If there are only two DLT drives and the problem was with one of these then put a tape in Drive 2 and run the follwoing commands on both drives

# mt -t /dev/rmt/3m

Drive: QUANTUM DLT8000
Format:
Status: [41118985] BOT online compression immediate-report-mode
File: 0
Block: 0

# mt -t /dev/rmt/1m status

$ mt -t /dev/rmt/1m status
Drive: QUANTUM DLT8000
Format:
Status: [0]
File: 0
Block: 0

On my example, tape 3 from the ioscan is what you know as drive 2, this is shown by the status from the above command:

Status: [41118985] BOT online compression immediate-report-mode

If you have more than 2 DLT drives and more than 1 dat then here is your problem.

HTH

Lawzo

Re: Recognizing tape drives!!

shailendra_8 — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 04:57:08 GMT

Amit,
I reckon ioscan will just tell you the SCSI physical connection. For the Drive to test as mentioned rightly by Rick, Patrick, Lawzo, Steve need to use the mt to track down the right one.

Cheers,
Shailendra

Re: Recognizing tape drives!!

Mobeen_1 — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 05:01:05 GMT

Amit,
ioscan would not help. In the AIX environment we used to use the 'mtlib' command.
I bet lot of people prior to this post are pointing in the same direction. I would urge that you try mt

rgds
Mobeen