Switching off external drives

[kenny chia]

Hi
I have a HP workstation with a external DDS drive connected. As the drive is in a dusty environment, I've decided to switch off the drive to prevent ingestion of dust by its ventilation fan. The dust is ruining my backups

After switching off the device, I have these syslog entries appearing daily

Jun 23 18:13:45 j EMS [1570]: ------ EMS Event Notification ------ Value: "CRITICAL (5)" for Resource: "/storage/eve
nts/tapes/SCSI_tape/8_16_5.3.0" (Threshold: >= " 3") Execute the following command to obtain event details: /opt/r
esmon/bin/resdata -R 102891530 -r /storage/events/tapes/SCSI_tape/8_16_5.3.0 -n 102891521 -a
Jun 24 18:13:54 j EMS [1570]: ------ EMS Event Notification ------ Value: "CRITICAL (5)" for Resource: "/storage/eve
nts/tapes/SCSI_tape/8_16_5.3.0" (Threshold: >= " 3") Execute the following command to obtain event details: /opt/r
esmon/bin/resdata -R 102891530 -r /storage/events/tapes/SCSI_tape/8_16_5.3.0 -n 102891522 -a
Jun 25 18:14:03 j EMS [1570]: ------ EMS Event Notification ------ Value: "CRITICAL (5)" for Resource: "/storage/eve
nts/tapes/SCSI_tape/8_16_5.3.0" (Threshold: >= " 3") Execute the following command to obtain event details: /opt/r
esmon/bin/resdata -R 102891530 -r /storage/events/tapes/SCSI_tape/8_16_5.3.0 -n 102891523 -a

A ioscan -funCtape still shows the device as claimed.

What could be causing these problems to occur at exactly time 18:14:00? I could not find any cron job that is executed around this time.

Will there be any future problems if the external drive remains off?

P.S. This thread has been moved from Storage>General to HP-UX > sysadmin. -HP Forum Moderator

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Kenny,
run these commands proposed in syslog to get more details.Do you power off or on at this time? Try rebooting machine to see if these events at 18:14 will dissapear
Eugeny

[kenny chia]

Hi
The results return

CURRENT MONITOR DATA:

Event Time : Wed Jun 25 18:14:03 2003
Hostname : jupiter IP Address : 192.168.9.55
Event Id : 0x003ef975eb00000000 Monitor : dm_stape
Event # : 5000 Event Class : I/O
Severity : CRITICAL

Unknown device at hardware path 8/16/5.3.0 : I/O failure

Associated OS error log entry id(s):
None

Latest information on this event:
http://docs.hp.com/hpux/content/hardware/ems/dm_stape.htm#5000

Description of Error:

Monitor cannot communicate with device at address 8/16/5.3.0. The device
is not in a state where it can process requests.

Probable Cause / Recommended Action:

The device may be in a trasitional state and cannot respond. Wait a few
seconds and retry the operation.

The device may be offline. Bring the device back on-line.

The device may be powered-off. Power it back on.


My guess is that the monitor program
/usr/sbin/stm/uut/bin/tools/monitor/dm_stape is logging these messages to syslog??

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Event's description is correct. As soon as you turn off drive system can not communicate with it (can not get diagnostic information from it). As soon as you'll turn drive on, daemon will be able to query drive and you'll not see these error messages.
Time 18:14 is logged because it looks like tape monitor runs its diags at this time, but drive appears to be off.
Generally, if you know that drive is off at the time you see event in syslog, then you can skip this event
Eugeny