cannot use fbackup with LTO4 tape drive

[Rony Etienne]

Hello Everyone,

I just installed a new ULT3580-TD4 tape drive to an L3000 running 11.11 OS. It is using the stape driver. It gives the below error when I use fbackup:
Starting interactive backup...
br_backup: Invoking fbackup. See /var/sam/log/br_log for details.
fbackup(1421): no history is available for graph file /var/sam/graphUEAa05069 (below level 0)
fbackup(1004): session begins on Thu May 29 09:47:30 2008
fbackup(3038): output file /dev/rmt/4m is not a valid device file for backup
fbackup(3019): would you like to enter a new output file?

tar works just fine.

sheila:/#tar -cvf /dev/rmt/4m /home/yetienne
a /home/yetienne/.cshrc 2 blocks
a /home/yetienne/.exrc 1 blocks
a /home/yetienne/.login 1 blocks
a /home/yetienne/.profile 1 blocks
a /home/yetienne/.sh_history 4 blocks
a /home/yetienne/upc444_cfn.dat 106 blocks
a /home/yetienne/sheila02/vg01.dr_mapfile 1 blocks
a /home/yetienne/sheila02/vg04.dr_mapfile 1 blocks

I can also use the "mt" commands.

Any ideas on how to resolve this?

Thank

[TTr]

Based on Bill's reply in

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1171406

ensure that you have the latest fbackup, tape driver and filesystem patches.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Well if this page is to be believed:

http://www.hp.com/products1/storage/compatibility/tapebackup/PA-RISC/Detail/16-0043-0019.html

Then HP's LTO4 isn't supported with 11.11 anyway.

Of course from what you write above - I'm guessing its not necessarily a HP version of the tape drive. If its actually an IBM version (and it looks like it is), you should be using the IBM atdd driver instead of stape:

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/storage/devdrvr/HPUX/11i_PCI/

The IBM tape devices can generate sense codes that the HP stape driver doesn't understand - so always best to use the correct driver.

HTH

Duncan

[Rony Etienne]

Thanks for responding. I installed the atdd driver, then the tape drive disappeared completely from sam. I could still see it using ioscan. I removed the atdd driver, and installed patch phkl_34552, PHKL_34805 and PHCO_35743. Still the same problem where fbackup cannot recognize it.

[TTr · Accepted solution]

> I installed the atdd driver, then the tape drive disappeared completely from sam. I could still see it using ioscan

It does not matter what SAM thinks, ioscan is the correct status. You did not mention if you tried the drive with fbackup and the atdd driver.

Also was the drive showing up bound to the atdd driver in the ioscan listing or was it still bound to the stape driver while the atdd driver was installed? I don't know if you should remove the stape driver from the kernel but it is worth a try.

[Bill Hassell]

It appears that the latest patch for fbackup/frecover (PHCO_37611) that Ultrium support is limited and since fbackup is coming to an end with 11.31, if it doesn't work with the IBM code, it's time to use a different backup program. Note that tar, cpio, dump, vxdump cannot keep up with LTO-4 (or LTO-3 for that matter) as the minimum data rate for compression will require multi-threaded data collection in order to keep the drive busy. LTO-4 is not just a bigger capacity tape. It is a very high speed tape drive, is too fast for many JBOD disks and will have degraded performance without special software.

[Rony Etienne]

Thanks everyone for responding.

TTr was correct. I needed to reinstall the adtt driver and use fbackup/frecover at the command line.