topic Re: Tape Drivers in Operating System - HP-UX

Tape Drivers

Amiel Tutolo — Thu, 17 Aug 2000 13:07:41 GMT

I have a Cybernetics tape drive and after install I am getting monitoring messages stating that there was an invalid field in the command data block.
The Probable Cause / Action is - This is an internal error, the installed version of the driver does not match that of the installed version of HP-UX. Install the correct version of the driver.

The driver that is installed is the one that came with my N-box.

My question is actually 2 parts:

1) How do I find the driver information? (version and so on)
2) Where can I find the most current tape drivers for 11.0 64bit?

I have 2 DDS3 drives on this system that I do not have a problem with. Any help would be much appreciated.

Re: Tape Drivers

Rick Garland — Thu, 17 Aug 2000 13:11:37 GMT

Drivers for a tape device will typically be stape or tape2.

You DDS tape drive probably is using the driver so the driver should be loaded into the kernel.

Re: Tape Drivers

Rick Garland — Thu, 17 Aug 2000 13:13:25 GMT

Further driver info can be obtained from the ITRC site.

Re: Tape Drivers

Stefan Farrelly — Thu, 17 Aug 2000 13:21:10 GMT

These cybernetics tape drives sort of 'spoof' as real HP ones but seem to work fine as long as they are;
1. running in native mode
2. you have all the latest tape patches loaded (simply load up the latest quarterly general release patch bundle - currently June2000 - from the ITRC)
3. the tape drive is on a SCSI bus all by itself - dont share the bus with other devices as the Cybernetics drive can start producing strange errors - which may be in your case.

Re: Tape Drivers

Andy Monks — Thu, 17 Aug 2000 13:21:49 GMT

Looks like your tape drive isn't talking exactly the same scsi as the hp drivers expect. This is common with unsupported devices. Scsi allows you to implement extra bits and if you use them, what you attach them to must know how to deal with them.

If the drive works, then ignore the messages, if it doesn't you could try downloading the latest scsi and tape patches to see if it helps.