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Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

 
Bjoern Rasmussen
Occasional Advisor

MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

Pulling out the magazine while the library is running, shows that the magazine sensor is working. A notification shows up in the display. I also tried to swap the left and right sensor, but this had no effect.

I have checked the left magazine for any sign of damage several times. It looks perfectly ok. All the lenses were inspected. The LEDs (for these lenses) on the sledge are cleaned. I also checked the cabinet for bends (thinking that the sledge lost its allignment), but this also looks fine.

It takes several minutes to initialize the library. The sled moves back and forth, trying to calibrate itself against the left magazine. When it's ready with the lowest row and start calibrating the mid row, it runs the recovery-procedure. The same thing happens when it moves up to the third row. It looks like it skips the coloumn nearest the front. The right magazine is allways scaned in seconds. Looks like it skips the calibration here.

The display often shows "Incompatible magazine" and sometimes "Wrong magazine".

I recently updated the firmware, hoping that this would help. It did, but just once. It worked perfecly right after the update process was done. The initialization and calibration went quicly, and the movements of the sledge behaved differntly. It looked like the library for some reason detected the magazine type correctly this time. After the next reboot, the library has misbehaved like before.

It looks like the mechanics is in good shape. It seems like a software related problem, though I may be wrong. Any ideas?
20 REPLIES 20
Bjoern Rasmussen
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

Some more info:

As I said, the calibration process on the left side take a long time. The new firmware shows the percentage of the scanning process. It takes several minutes to reach 50%. "UnlockMailslot.." and then "Close mailslot" now shows up in the display. Then the sledge starts scanning the right side, which take just some seconds. The percentage jumps quickly up to 88%. Then the sledge tuns back to the left side again, and spends several minutes trying to calibrate itself the second time. Eventually the 100% number is reached.
Bjoern Rasmussen
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

Is there anybody who knows how the library's firmware detects type of left magazine, one mailslot or three mailslots?
Curtis Ballard
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

If you pull out the magazine with the mailslot and look at the lower front lip of the slots you will see that all of the slots have a clear plastic insert that looks like 2 or 3 plastic "U" characters side by side.

The slots that are mailslots have an insert with 2 of the "U" characters on the right hand side of the slot and the slots that are standard storage slots have an insert with 3 of the "U" characters in the center of the slot.

A 3 slot magazine has the narrow insert in the lower right corner of all 3 of the slots at the front of the magazine and a 1 slot magazine only has the narrow insert in the lower right corner of the lowest slot and the middle and top slots use the standard wide insert in the middle.

The transport assembly uses optical sensing to locate the inserts and determine both slot position and whether the slot is storage or mailslot.

Note that mailslot slots have two notches and an insert only in the appropriate location for identifying a mailslot or storage slot. If something is in the notch where the mailslot identification insert is supposed to be installed it may be possible for the transport to see enough reflection to think that the slot is a mailslot when it isn't. I haven't see that but it would be possible.
MajidNX
Frequent Advisor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

This is what those should look like
I work for HP
Bjoern Rasmussen
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

Many thanks to both of you for your kindly help!

I also suspected the "inserts", what I named "lenses". I checked them again and they all looked good. I even picked them out and inserted them all in new positions(except for the mailslot insert). It had no effect.

Still it looks like the sledge has problems calibrating against the inserts (as described above). Looks like it's the 3 inserts closest to the front on the left side that is difficult to read.

I noticed that the bottom of the mailslot is raised aproximately half a millimeter compared to the 3 other lowest positons, due to the moveable mechanics of the mailslot. I guess that's ok.

I tried to downgrade/upgrade the firmware again, but this had no effect this time. I also tried "Restore Factory Defaults" without any luck.

Anyway, I can live with the problem. The library works if I don't use the 3 front positions and disable the mailslot.

Thanks again!
Curtis Ballard
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

Could you please grab a support ticket for the library controller from the web interface with the latest firmware right after the library attempts to calibrate the magazine and post it here?

I would like to have the engineers take a look at the logs and see if they can figure out what is going wrong as this isn't a known issue.
alastair cay
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

Hi

I am getting the exact same issue.
it started with incompatible magazine error.
i firmwared from 3.70 up to 4.40 the 2 ultruim drives are at S63W and now i am not getting the imcompatible magazine error,
just the 3 slots which think they are mailslots with "No Access" in the web console under status\inventory on left hand magazine and the Recovery process every time the magazines are ejected.
I have attached a support ticket from after the tapes were changed.

any help would be much appreciated.
Bjoern Rasmussen
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

Thanks for great support!

Here's my support ticket.

First I upgraded from the 3.70 to the 4.40 firmware again. Then I chose "Restore Factory Defaults" from the web interface. I enabled the mailslot. Finally I rebootet the library. I then grabed the support ticket.

I can confirm what Alastair Cay says. It's exactly what I experienced.
Bjoern Rasmussen
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL2024: Left magazine detected having 3 mailslots instead of one

Sorry, I didnt't manage to include the ticket. I'll try again.