tar command hangs on SDLT320 drive

[kenny chia]

Hi all
I have a RedHat AS3 update 6 DL380G4 server
I face the following scenerio
1) Insert tape A into drive
2) Ran a tar -tv command on the drive (OK)
3) Eject tape A
4) Insert tape B into drive
5) Ran another tar -tv command -> tar command hangs

Need to reboot the server in order to kill the tar command

Does anyone face the same problem?

[Bernhard Mueller]

Kenny,

I'd suspect an issue with the tape - or the contents of the tape. I take it you know for sure there's a tarfile on it?

Try a *new* tape and write a tarfile to the drive that hung and see if you can tar -tv.

If you have another drive try tape B in that drive.

Try dd to copy the content of the tape to a file on disk and try the file command on that diskfile.

Try overwriting the content of tape B and see if you can read.

Regards,
Bernhard