DLT7000 replacement

[Michael J Drehobl]

I've got a DLT7000 (C6375A) on a rp5450/L2000 that appears to be on it's last legs.

Starting a few days ago, we have not been getting our nightly fbackup job to complete with a message of:

fbackup(3040): output file /dev/rmt/0m encountered an I/O error
fbackup(3019): would you like to enter a new output file?
fbackup(3004): writer aborting
fbackup(1002): Backup did not complete : Reader or Writer process exit

I'm assuming this means the DLT7000 drive is failing and needs to be replaced.

I have a spare & want to do the swap out myself, but need to know if this can be done with the rp5450 under power or if the system should be shutdown before removing the old DLT7000 replacing with our spare DLT7000. It is connected via FW SCSI.

Any recommendations?

Thanks
Mike

[Torsten.]

Normally never open a powered bus, unless the device is hot swap.

[Tim Nelson · Accepted solution]

FW SCSI does NOT like to be unplugged hot like SE SCSI or LVD SCSI. You may render the controller useless requiring another outage for the repair.

Shutdown and power off the server and tape drive. replace. power back on.

the tape drive being broken is assuming that all your tapes are all good and the drive is clean ?

[Michael J Drehobl]

Understood regarding taking system down to replace. Thanks.

Regarding your other questions - yes we have run tape cleaning and tried using both old and new tapes...same results.

For some reason the device is unattaching itself. Doing an ioscan shows it claimed, but SAM does not see it when trying to access via Backup/Recovery to test. Powering off/on directly on the DLT7000 will get it to reappear, but by the time the backup job runs at 2am, it fails. Thus I'm assuming some sort of failure of the DLT7000 from a connectivity or power standpoint. Anything else I should be checking?

Thanks
Mike

[Michael J Drehobl]

Just did an "ioscan -fnC tape" and it shows a SW state of "NO_HW"...also no longer appears as a valid device in SAM.

Mike

[Tim Nelson]

just a shot in the dark..

check cables and replace terminator ( when powered down )

[TwoProc]

FYI - Re: Tim's suggestion:

We had the exact same issue on a DVD-ROM drive just two days ago, and replacing the scsi terminator fixed the problem.

[Michael J Drehobl]

Okay, I've got a new DLT drive, new SCSI cable and new terminator. Before I go to do the install (with system powered down)...are there any commands I need to run before/after installing the new DLT so that HP-UX will recognize it? Anything else I'm missing other than power down, plug it in and power back up?
Thanks
Mike

[Torsten.]

If the new device is the same type, just do an ioscan. If it is a different device, remove the device files (rmsf) and create a new set of device files (insf).

[Michael J Drehobl]

Thanks for the help!