Problem with device files of tape drive

[Maxim Yakimenko]

Hi, collegues

I've presented some Ultrium-4 drives via SAN to hp-ux server. All have to types of SDF

/dev/rmt/DDxxY and /dev/rmt/cXyXtXBESTX

But one has only /dev/rmt/cXyYtZ

I tried
1) Disable/enable port of that drive on SAN switch and ioscan/insf -e
2) rm SDF and ioscan/insf -e
3) rmsf and ioscan/insf -e

But still SDF /dev/rmt/DDxxY did not apear. What I can do else?

[Jaime Bolanos Rojas.]

I would remove all the tape devices for all the drives.
shutdown the drives manually.
Restart them again and try re-creating all the device files again with insf.

Regards,

jaime.

[Maxim Yakimenko]

And why remove all? Also, this drives are in ESL tape lib - can I shutdown exact drive in it?

[Michal Kapalka (mikap)]

hi,

what type of backup Sw do you have ???

We are using Netbackup, and we hade similiar problem after stop the netbackup recreating of SDF and them start it again, there was something like allocation of this drives.

mikap

[Maxim Yakimenko]

We use DP, but I see no correaltion between SDF and backup soft - or you mean that backup soft is responsible for creating special files?

[Wim Rombauts]

Are you sure your server effectiveky sees the tapedrives ?

What is the output of "ioscan -fC tape" ? Are your tapedrives listed ? And what instance numbers do they have ? Maybe they reused older instance numbers, and therefor reused older existing devicefiles ?

[Maxim Yakimenko]

All fine

ioscan -fCtape show all ten drives as claimed devices of class tape and driver stape. Instance numbers are not crossed and not reused - just this one drive lacks device files /dev/rmt/DDxx, according to its instance number it should be /dev/rmt/12m(n) - but theese files do on exist.

[Duncan Edmonstone · Accepted solution]

stale old tape DSFs sometimes cause this problem...

lssf /dev/rmt/* | grep '???'

anything that returns needs deleting, then re-run your "insf -e"

HTH

Duncan

[Maxim Yakimenko]

Duncan, many-many-many thanks! It works!

Collegues, thanks for your replies

[Maxim Yakimenko]

Stale SDF were removed and new one were created by "insf -H ..."