dd pbs with 7980 nine track drive

[NTC]

HI all,
does anyone has idea why the dd can't work on the nine track tape drives?
we are using HPUX 11i and for some reasons we needed to install a nine track 7980 SE SCSI cartridge drive.
if we use the tar with the "b" option it works for writing and reading from the 7980,while dd can write on the nine track normally but can not read what it wrote...any ideas are appreciated.

Thx
Suheil

[Michael Steele_2]

Can you provide the 'exact' dd commands for both as well as the error message and 'ioscan -fnkC tape' display?

[NTC]

HI Micheal,

Thx for ur reply, today i investigated the pb more with the nine track tape drive and i got the following:

1-the command i used for dd is standard one:
dd if=/tmp/testfile of=/dev/rmt/11mb
i used it also with different options ( like bs=5k, cbs=276, conv=block..),and most i could get with these options today was writting to the tape with dd and read back the data but not consistent, corrupted with I/O error reading..i noticed the size of the file read from the tape is truncated to the same value of "cbs" option used with dd...

i used the device file (/dev/rmt/11mb),the berkely verion coz seemed to work better then /dev/rmt/11m , the at&t version.

2-i tried to create customized device files other than the default ones (using sam or mksf),the files are fine created but could not use them, always got error msg " on tape open: no such device or address", even lssf show them bind to the correct HW address of the tape.

3- the ioscan -knfC tape shows:

Class I HW Path Driver Description

tape 11 0/0/1/0.5.0 /dev/rmt/11m HP 88780
/dev/rmt/11mn
/dev/rmt/11mb
/dev/rmt/11mnb
.
.
.

when i write to the tape drive with dd write is successfull ( 0 is the output of $? ) when i read from that tape i got:
dd read errror: I/O error
0+0 records in
0+0 recoreds out

echo $? shows: 2

i even tried to rewind the tape with mt command after writing before reading form the tape, i got the same errors.
finally, tar with the option "tar -cvbf 64 /dev/...) can write and read form the nice track tape. we are using hpux 11i as OS.

any ideas will be appreciated

regards
Suheil

[Andy Simpson_1]

If ioscan is displaying the tape drive as an HP88780 then this tape drive has been maufactured by HP for other peoples servers. The unit would need to be converted & have HP firmware loaded to display HP7980 in ioscan. Also, officially the 7980 is not supported on hpux after 10.10. You would also have to be careful of the type of interface you are connecting to as the tape drive has not been officially tested on ultra scsi or lvd. The stape driver should be ok to load.

[Michael Steele_2]

Here are some threads which may or may not be of assistance. One thread is also about failure of the 'dd' command. The first three are all interface related. I thought they offered the best possible solution of the group:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x77f0ed6464a6d611abdb0090277a778c,00.html

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x11a73a7b3682d611abdb0090277a778c,00.html

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x08364b3ef09fd611abdb0090277a778c,00.html


http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xdea1d5fab40ed6118ff40090279cd0f9,00.html


http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x29a63a7b3682d611abdb0090277a778c,00.html

[NTC]

Guys thx for ur replies,

i think it could be the case of updating the firmware as u said...im wondering if this can be done by software or we have to buy new 'EPROMS" for the upgrade...can anyone knows the source where to get this??

About the interface used on the drive , it is Single ended and i doubt it has any issues coz the system saw the device correctly & the tar command works with no errors what do u think ?

Regards
Suheil