topic Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version in Operating System - OpenVMS

Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Andreas Fassl — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 02:18:17 GMT

Hi,

a customer sent me a tape for data conversion, written on his VAX.
System-Config: TLZ06 with VMS 6.2
My System: OpenVMS 7.1 Alpha with a HP C1537A (Dat3)

Tried some hints found in elder threads, but no positive results.

What type of DAT-standard does the TLZ06?

Any other hints?

Thanks in advance,

with kind regards

Andreas
ORASRV::SYSTEM $ backup/list mka600:cam.bck/save
Listing of save set(s)

%BACKUP-F-POSITERR, error positioning MKA600:[000000]CAM.BCK;
-SYSTEM-F-OPINCOMPL, operation is incomplete
ORASRV::SYSTEM $ dismount mka600:/nounload
ORASRV::SYSTEM $ backup/list mka600:cam.bck/save
Listing of save set(s)

%MOUNT-I-MOUNTED, CAM mounted on _ORASRV$MKA600:
%BACKUP-F-LABELERR, error in tape label processing on MKA600:[000000]CAM.BCK;
-BACKUP-F-NOTANSI, tape is not valid ANSI format

ORASRV::SYSTEM $ dump mka600:
%DUMP-E-READERR, error reading MKA600:
-SYSTEM-F-OPINCOMPL, operation is incomplete

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Karl Rohwedder — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:33:52 GMT

Adreas, I think your tapedrive should be able to read a properly written TLZ06 tape.
Did you know the format, your customer wrote the tape?

You may try a:
$ mount /over=id mka600:
$ dir mka600:

or

$ mount/for mka600:
$ back/list mka600:*.*

regards Kalle

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Andreas Fassl — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:37:08 GMT

ORASRV::SYSTEM $ mount/for mka600
%MOUNT-I-MOUNTED, mounted on _ORASRV$MKA600:
ORASRV::SYSTEM $ dir mka600:
%DIRECT-E-OPENIN, error opening MKA600:[SYSMGR]*.*;* as input
-SYSTEM-F-NOTFILEDEV, device is not file structured
ORASRV::SYSTEM $

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Andreas Fassl — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:38:17 GMT

ORASRV::SYSTEM $ mount/for mka600
%MOUNT-I-MOUNTED, mounted on _ORASRV$MKA600:
ORASRV::SYSTEM $ backup/list mka600
%BACKUP-F-LISINPSAV, /LIST requires save set as input
ORASRV::SYSTEM $ backup/list mka600:*.*
Listing of save set(s)

%BACKUP-F-LABELERR, error in tape label processing on MKA600:[000000]*.*;
-BACKUP-F-NOTANSI, tape is not valid ANSI format
ORASRV::SYSTEM $

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Andreas Fassl — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:39:50 GMT

ORASRV::SYSTEM $ mount/over=id mka600:
%MOUNT-I-OPRQST, device _ORASRV$MKA600: contains the wrong volume
%MOUNT-I-OPRQST, Please mount device _ORASRV$MKA600:
Interrupt

ORASRV::SYSTEM $ mount/over=(id,access,owner) mka600:
%MOUNT-I-OPRQSTCAN, operator request canceled
%MOUNT-I-OPRQST, device _ORASRV$MKA600: contains the wrong volume
%MOUNT-I-OPRQST, Please mount device _ORASRV$MKA600:
Interrupt

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Andreas Fassl — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:42:50 GMT

My experience was, that DAT was sort of unreliable in the end. I'll try this with an old original DAT drive again. If I've no success, I'll send the customer my drive.

Any other hints?

You see, that the drive mounts the tape with the correct label (CAM), but then - ...

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Karl Rohwedder — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:43:21 GMT

I would ask the customer for the exactly commands he used when writing the tape. May be the tape is just bad.

regards Kalle

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Andreas Fassl — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:46:06 GMT

Hi,

he just the standard backup commands. Maybe the tape is bad, but I did send him a tape I initialized on my drive. This tape he couldn't mount, too.
So my guess - drives are not defect, but for some reasons they can't interoperate.

Regards

Andreas

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Karl Rohwedder — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:51:33 GMT

May be the read/write heads in one of the tapedrives are badly misaligned, so that interchaning tapes is not possible.

regards Kalle

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Thomas Ritter — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:59:03 GMT

Maybe...

$ mount /over=id mka600:
$ copy/log mka600:*.* *.*

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 02:25:57 GMT

If the data is not too large : http://www.yousendit.com/

Wim

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Vladimir Fabecic — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 07:20:40 GMT

This should be a hardware problem. I had simular problem with some old alpha servers (with old TLZ06 tape drives). Only one of three tape drives could read data.
Then we realized that old tape drives and old cartridges is not something to trust. And I used external DLT drive and everything worked OK.
Find better solution then DAT drives.

Regards

Re: Tape problem - Hardware or OS-Version

Phillip Thayer — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 13:58:43 GMT

Andreas,

This is most likely a tape head alignment problem. Unfortunately this has been a problem with tape drives since the 9-track tape days. I have seen this numerous times and a simple call for hardware maintenance to do a tape head alignment (which these days is usually a hardware swap for a different drive while the take the bad one to a shop and align the heads) should take care of the problem.

Phil