SDLT tape issues

[Allan Patterson]

I have an MSL5026 Tape library with two SDLT tape drives. These are recognised as tape0 and tape1 on the system. My problem is this:

I have Compaq SDLT 220 cartridge that I got with the system. I have no problems writing to this SDLT tape. However, when I put an SDLT manufactured by Imitiation, I cannot write to the tape. I see the following from an mt status command:

DEVIOGET ELEMENT CONTENTS
---------------- --------
category DEV_TAPE
bus DEV_SCSI
interface SCSI
device SuperDLT
adpt_num 0
nexus_num 7
bus_num 0
ctlr_num 5
slave_num 29
dev_name tz
unit_num 29
soft_count 0
hard_count 0
stat 0x1
DEV_BOM
category_stat 0x0
DEV_131000_BPI

DEVGETINFO ELEMENT CONTENTS
------------------ --------
media_status 0x10001
BOM POS_VALID
unit_status 0x181
Ready 2_FM_Close NO_Rewind Compacting Buffered
record_size 0
density (current) 131000 BPI
density (on write) 0 BPI
Filemark Cnt 0
Record Cnt 0
Class 1 - DLT (tk)

MTIOCGET ELEMENT CONTENTS
---------------- --------
mt_type MT_ISSCSI
mt_dsreg 0x1
DEV_BOM
mt_erreg 0x8 Blank media encountered.
mt_resid 0
mt_fileno 0
mt_blkno 0
DEV_EEI_STATUS
version 0x2
status 0x3200 Device inoperable (needs initialize)
flags 0x1000007
CAM_STATUS SCSI_STATUS SCSI_SENSE CAM_DATA
cam_status 0x4 CCB request completed with an err
scsi_status 0x2 SCSI_STAT_CHECK_CONDITION
scsi_sense_data (hex)
f0 0 8 0 0 0 0 16
0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0
0 0 82 0 2d 0 0 31
eb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
ASC/ASQ = 0/5 End of data detected



I thought that this might be an issue with the tape1 device but when I swap tapes so that the Compaq tape is in tape1 and the Imitiation tape is in tape 0 then Tape 1 os ok but Tape 0 is not writable.

Do I need to do some sort of formatting on the Imitation tape and if so what are the commands to do this?

Any help appreciated.

Allan.

[Shaikh Imran]

Hi,
Please give some more details:
What O.S you are using ?
What is your backup software or you are using tar,dd,cpio,ftio ?
Also have you confirmed with the Tape Drive manuals,the support matrix for this Drive
whether it supports third party medias.

My advice is to go for the same brand media only.

Regards,