topic Re: hpux 11iv2 how many times has a tape been written to? in Operating System - HP-UX

hpux 11iv2 how many times has a tape been written to?

jesc516 — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 20:39:03 GMT

hello everyone,

is there a command to view how many times a tape has been written to?

i am using sam, backup and recovery, interactive backup and recovery to write the data to the tapes.

any help is greatly appreciated

Re: hpux 11iv2 how many times has a tape been written to?

Bill Hassell — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 23:56:27 GMT

Since you are using SAM for backups, you are running the fbackup program which will track the number of times that fbackup was used on this tape. This is a feature of fbackup but relies on the tape to have the header from a previous fbackup. To read the header:

# frecover -V - -f /dev/rmt/<whatever>
Magic Field:FBACKUP_LABEL
Machine Identification:ia64
System Identification:HP-UX
Release Identification:B.11.31
Node Identification:atl6
User Identification:root
Record Size:4194304
Time:Mon Jul 27 19:47:00 2015
Media Use:27
Volume Number:1
Checkpoint Frequency:8192
Fast Search Mark Frequency:5000
Index Size:18019
Backup Identification Tag:12454 1438040820
Language:

The line: Media Use:27

indicates how many times this tape was written with fbackup.

As long as you use this tape only with SAM for backups, the counter will be intact.

If you use any other program such as tar or cpio to write on the tape, then the header is erased and the counter is lost. The next SAM backup to this tape will start the counter at 1. You'll see the message at the beginning of the fbakup session:

fbackup(3205): WARNING: unable to read a volume header

which means the tape header is not fbackup and will be overwritten.

Re: hpux 11iv2 how many times has a tape been written to?

jesc516 — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:07:08 GMT

Hi Bill,

thank you for the above command.

do you know why the above command would stop working using a cleaning tape on the drive? i checked the write counter on a few tapes and ran the cleaning tape before putting in the production tape and ran the command there after and now i am getting the below message:

# frecover -V - -f /dev/rmt/1m
frecover(5403): Unable to open or identify device at /dev/rmt/1m

frecover(5405): unable to open /dev/rmt/1m
frecover(5406): Do you wish to continue? (^[yY]/^[nN]) Y
frecover(5432): Media rewind failed
frecover(5402): failed close on device /dev/rmt/1m
frecover(5404): Press return when the next volume is ready on /dev/rmt/1m:

it was working prior to running cleaning tape as i tested on an old tape:

# frecover -V - -f /dev/rmt/1m
Magic Field:FBACKUP_LABEL
Machine Identification:9000/800
System Identification:HP-UX
Release Identification:B.11.23
...

Re: hpux 11iv2 how many times has a tape been written to?

pooderbill — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 15:44:16 GMT

Run the mt command to check the status.

The cleaning tape puts tape drives into a strange state and some versions of firmware don't handle the cycle cleanup very well. Use it like this:

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

If it reports that 1m is not ready or that the device is not reaady, try running an ioscan and device file refresh like this:

# ioscan -fC tape
# insf -C tape

Re: hpux 11iv2 how many times has a tape been written to?

jesc516 — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 20:25:48 GMT

i had a bad terminator. i was able to run # frecover -V - -f /dev/rmt/1m but once i ran the cleaning tape both tape drives showed NO_HW when i did # iocan -fnC tape and i could not use the frecover command.

support replaced the terminator and now both tape drives show CLAIMED

is it safe to do a device file refresh # insf -C tape after a clean? i wrote to both tape drives and was able to read and i ran the cleaning tape on both drives. everything looks ok as far as i can tell:

# mt -f /dev/rmt/1m status
Drive: HP C5683A
Format:
Status: [41112600] BOT online compression immediate-report-mode
File:   0
Block: 0
# mt -f /dev/rmt/0m status
Drive: HP C5683A
Format:
Status: [41112600] BOT online compression immediate-report-mode
File:   0
Block: 0
# ioscan -fC tape
Class     I H/W Path     Driver S/W State   H/W Type     Description
=====================================================================
tape      0 0/3/1/1.0.0 stape CLAIMED     DEVICE       HP      C5683A
tape      1 0/3/1/1.1.0 stape CLAIMED     DEVICE       HP      C5683A

Re: hpux 11iv2 how many times has a tape been written to?

pooderbill — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 21:56:02 GMT

The bad terminator caused all the problems. ioscan showed no hardware because the tape drive was not communicating with the OS correctly. The cleaning cycle probably did not cause this condition but just made it visible. You were lucky that fbackup completed OK.

The insf command can be run at any time. It will not remove or change any device files - it does some internal checking to find any pieces of equipment that do not have device files, and also corrects ownership settings.

Re: hpux 11iv2 how many times has a tape been written to?

pooderbill — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 22:28:52 GMT

# ioscan -fC tape
Class     I  H/W Path     Driver S/W State   H/W Type     Description
=====================================================================
tape      0  0/3/1/1.0.0  stape CLAIMED     DEVICE       HP      C5683A
tape      1  0/3/1/1.1.0  stape CLAIMED     DEVICE       HP      C5683A

It appears that both tape drives are connected on the same SCSI cable -- not a recommended path. Tape drives should always be connected to dedicated SCSI cards with no other devices. The DDS4 (DAT40) drive needs about 6 MBytes/sec to keep from repositioning during backups. To keep the data streaming as fast as possible, be sure to use an fbackup config file like this:

blocksperrecord 4096
records 64
checkpointfreq 8192
readerprocesses 6
maxretries 5
retrylimit 5000000
maxvoluses 200
filesperfsm 5000

Save this as /etc/fbackup.config and then add it to your fbackup command like this:

# fbackup -i / -v -c /etc/fbackup.conf -f /dev/rmt/0m

You should see a significantly faster backup speed.