Dlt tape drive error return code 5 and 6 when running a sybase backup

[James Miles Taylor]

On my system when we run our nightly sybase backup we seem to be getting an error on our DLT7000 tape drive. It shows an I/O error with a r/c 5 then it goes to an r/c 6. Both show an i/o error and the r/c 6 is a timeout. It says to look in the unix operating manual for what the r/c 5 is but I can find it anywhere. Anybody have an idea what the return codes are telling me and also maybe how to correct them.

Thanks,

James

[Bill Hassell]

Return codes are commonly referred to as errno values which one might expect to be documented in the errno man page. But alas, only the symbolic name are shown, so you have to look in the header file:

/usr/include/sys/errno.h

So for a given error number, first search in errno.h for a match, then using the symbolic name, look at the man page for errno for details. errno 5 is EIO or an I/O error has occurred...which is the code returned by the driver to an I/O request which fails due to an unrecoverable hardware error.

errno 6 is ENXIO or device not found or physical limits have been exceeded. Check for bad tapes, dirty heads, hardware problem.