Connect DAT40 to DL380 G4

[ALee_2]

I have a new DL380G4, with onboard 6i array controller and additional 642 array controller. The 642 is connected with 3 x 72GB disks running RAID5. I connected a SureStore DAT40 to the external port of 6i controller. It is detected at hardware boot. I loaded Red Hat Linux, but the tape drive is not detecte. I used mt -f /dev/st0 stat, it says "No such device".

Someone said it is ok in Windows environment but not sure if it works in Linux.

Is that true? Any solution?

Thanks.
A Lee

[CA1175339]

I think you'll have to load the 6i driver in Linux before you try to access the drive. Check out the drivers from this web site:

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/family/model/5561.html

Good luck!

[Stuart Browne]

Which RedHat did you install?

Generally speaking, the recent 'cciss' drivers should work ok with a tape attached to the SA, however I've never gotten an external tape to work (only a hot-swap one internally).

That being said, it might still work. Some things to check.

You've said it shows up during POST.. This is a good thing. Next thing to check is once the system has booted.

What are the contents of '/proc/scsi/scsi'. Does it list any 'Sequential Access' devices? If it does, then you need to check if the 'st' module is inserted into the kernel (the 'lsmod' command).

If it isn't listed, then it goes back to the kernel. There are some kernel options which have to be set in order for the 'cciss' driver to allow tapes on it's bus'. The main one is:

CONFIG_CISS_SCSI_TAPE=y

Most (if not all) RH systems should have this in their distributed (and eratta) kernels by default. If this is set like this, then have a quick read through the document '/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-*/cciss.txt' (in particular the section on engaging scsi). It talks about this.

If all of that still fails, then you need another controller for the tape.

[ALee_2]

I am using Fedora Core 3.

I manage to make it work by doing the following:

for x in /proc/driver/cciss/cciss0
do
echo "engage scsi" > $x
done

I learned this from another thread of this forum:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=729163

[Stuart Browne]

well that's what it says to do in that 'cciss.txt' file I sent you too.. ah well.

[ALee_2]

Stuart,

You should be right. However, I couldn't find the doc you indicated in my system. Thanks a lot for your help.

ALee