mt rewoffl doesn't work

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi all,

We have got some new dlt8000 tape drives and I have discovered a strange thing. The mt rewoffl does not produce any error, the mt status say no tape in drive but the green light does not come on, it stays in use.

This happens under 5.1B pk3 and 4.0F pk6.

Thanks for any hint,

Michael

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

Michael,

check the command, I don't know if there is a parameter rewoffl for mt

Are you using the same tape for both drives.?...just thought about asking

Mo

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

this command is in use since years. ;-)
There are two tapes involved.
The backup ran by crontab fine, only the rewoffl didn't work.

thanks,

Michael

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

yeah...now I can see it, it is the same thing as offline, I usually use offline and it rewinds the tape by itself
try mt offline, maybe the rewoffl does wait for something or doing something extra to the tape and just takes a long time.

Mohamed

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

I was already wondering why two seemingly same commands are there.
I suspect however now the tape because I inserted it again and all lights were flashing on the right side. I tried this in another drive, same effect.
Then as I was about do dispose off the tape, my collegue opened it and moved the tape header. I tried again and now it seems to work again. Strange!

thanks,

Michael

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

I suspected the tape, but you mentioned before that there are 2 tapes involved, so I put that aside

If you were using the same tape in doing all your trials, may be the tape is bad indeed

It seems that you load the tape and unload it to test it. try loading it and make sure it is loaded, may be it hasn't been loaded at all because the leader was mispositioned


Mohamed

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

my trials here involved one tape. There was however in another location the same incident. I am not restoring the data from the tape to disk and it seems to work. Must check on the progress.

thanks,

Michael

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

it is funny. I just restored a host from tape. At first all lights were blinking. Since I was too tired to stop the job, I was waiting for upcoming error messages, but alas no came and also the blinking light disappeared. So I wonder, what they mean, if not error?!?

thanks for any idea(Ralf, what about you?)

Michael

[Eric van Dijken]

Been awhile since i have seen a DLT7000, but...

Was this a new tape on which all leds flashed after insertion? If so select the correct density with the buttons, write to the tape and next time the tape is labeled and will work fine.

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi Eric,

it was not a new tape and the strange thing, I just have to ignore it and it will go away. The cron job ran again and again no green light. mt status says no tape as well ltt. When I press the unload button, it just clicks and the light goes to green as if it is somewhat a little blocked or so.

thanks for writing,

Michael