fbackup error message

[Becke]

Hi Guys,

I'm using fabackup command to backup the filesystem but I'm getting the following error message.

Error: write error on FSM in the ANSII label.
write error at the begining of the volume.

Here is the fbackup which I'm using and it always used to work for me.
fbackup -vf /dev/rmt/3m -g /graphfile

Please advise..Thanks in advance guys

[Steven E. Protter]

Try a different tape. Seems like the tape is bad.

SEP

[melvyn burnard]

looks like you may have a problem with the media.
try another tape, or test the tape using tar or dd.
You may also have to clean the tape unit.

[Becke]

Thanks guys for your response and help, it appeared to be that the tape drive is faulty, I have put cleaning tape enough times but no difference.

I'm now looking a workaround of this.

Thanks for your help, we have a good team here.

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

You can verify the hardware failure with a simple tar or cpio backup. If you get an error code = 5, then the drive must be replaced. You should see tape errors logged in syslog unless someone has turned off or deleted your online diagnostics.

[Marlou Everson]

Use tar to write to the tape and try the same tape again. The error is only at the start of the tape and the tar will overwrite the ANSII label. We had this problem when our tapes were shared with Windoze servers that were using a different backup product. Evidently the label on the tape created by the Windoze backup would confuse fbackup. Once we made separate tape pools, the problem went away.

Marlou

[Himanshu_3]

Marlou,

Just a little thought, why would not fbackup here be able to format the ANSII label, as in normal cases, fbackup does identify whether the tape has been previously used up or not in fbackup .

Cheers,
Himanshu

[Marlou Everson]

This was my experience several years ago. In fact, so long ago, it might have been NetWare and not Windoze backups. We have since switched to Data Protector.

Fbackup (1M) does have its own volume header format (man fbackup) where it keeps track of system info, media use, etc. If you write to the tape with tar or cpio or another backup product it will overwrite fbackup's volume header. If you keep using the same tape pool for fbackup, you will see how many times the tape has been used. Otherwise, fbackup cannot read "its" volume header and you see "unable to read a volume header."

An old white paper I have on fbackup shows that it does have an ANSI standard label. My guess is that fbackup is trying to write in this area but running out of room (EOF marker?). If we knew what "FSM" meant it might help.

Of course, it's always possible that the tape itself or the tape drive is bad.

Marlou

[Becke]

Thanks Marlou and everyone else for your help and support, I have gained some additional knowledge on HP as my main platform is AIX.

I have found out that the tape drive is faulty as none of the commands are working ie.fbackup,tar,cpio and dd...

We are getting the tape drive replaced today with the new one and hopefully this will resolve the problem.

Thanks once again for everyone's help and time, I have also assigned points..

Regards,
Raf