IGNITE-UX

[Arun Jain]

Dear All,

I was taking the ignite backup of two servers, one with ULT-III and other with QUANTUM DLT8000
Drive.

by mistake both the tapes were removed by one fellow and the backup halted in between.

But when I restarted both the backups, they ended giving one error in both the servers..
The error is :
"pax: write : I/O error
pax: A write error has occurred.
WARNING: The pax command returned a non-zero exit status (exit status 1)"

Please suggest that is there any threat to OS or any other criticality could occur or not.

Regards :
Arun Jain

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Make sure that your tapes are write-enabled and restart your Ignite 'make_tape_recovery'. There is nothing to worry about otherwise.

I'd suggest to your co-worker that he/she look at the blinking tape drive lights the next time :-)

Regards!

...JRF...

[Kenan Erdey]

Hi,

this error indicates that it's a problem about writing to media. just sure that you can see tape with ioscan -fnC tape. and insert a clean cartridge. and do backup.

Kenan.

[Arun Jain]

Hi James and Kenan,

I have checked the device with "ioscan -fnC tape" command. It is showing me the device file but in the Software status, it is showing that "NO_HW"
plz refer the following output :
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
=======================================================================
tape 0 1/0/0/3/1.3.0 stape NO_HW DEVICE HP Ultrium 3-SCSI
/dev/rmt/0m /dev/rmt/0mn /dev/rmt/c3t3d0BEST /dev/rmt/c3t3d0BESTn
/dev/rmt/0mb /dev/rmt/0mnb /dev/rmt/c3t3d0BESTb /dev/rmt/c3t3d0BESTnb

What could be the possible problem.
And moreover, plz tell whether I'll be able to take the backup on the same tape after reinserting, rewinding and restarting the backup or I have to use new tapes because
as you are saying that it is not able to write on the media. Whether the same media could be used or not.

Regards :
Arun Jain

[Mr.Right]

Hi Arun,

Use ioscan to find the correct tape drive and insert a clean tape and use the command to start the ignite backup and every thing will be fine.

# make_tape_recovery -A -v -I -C

if this is also giving u error use this command and specify the tape drive address

# make_tape_recovery -A -v -I -C -d /dev/rmt/Xm

If still you are getting any error please run this command and paste the output :-

# make_tape_recovery -A -v -I -C -p

Best of Luck,

Regards,
Right.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

The 'NO_HW' state shown in your 'ioscan' means that the hardware (tape drive) is not responding. Check the cabeling betwwen the server and the tape device. Something more than merely ejecting the tape was done.

As for the original tape used, it is perfectly reusable. Tapes have a small tab on their container to enable/disable writing to the tape. Simply make sure that when you want to write to a tape that the tab is in a position to allow it. If you only want to read from a tape and not write to it, the write-tab in a read-only position protects you from inadvertantly over-writing something you want.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Kenan Erdey]

Hi,

bu sure you plugged in tape. Because it says it can't see the hardware. plugged in carefully and do ioscan again.

Kenan.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

I ahould add this. Do you only have one tape device? Did the original Ignite backup specify the output device?; e.g.

... -f /dev/rmt/1mn

If it did, and the device was *not* '0mn' then specify that again. By default, Ignite will look for a tape device at '0mn' which happens to be your dead or non-existent hardware.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Arun Jain]

Hi James,

I have a tape rack with two drives and a single SCSI and power cable.

But I am also running other vxdump backup in the night time daily and in those logs also, it is showing the same device file "0mn" i.e. default.

So, now plz suggest what could be done.

Regards :
Arun Jain

[Anka]

The NO_HW should be firts solved in order to be able to operate with the tape drive.\
Forget about igniote and teh other things, the drive should be first online (in claimed state.)
The system does not recognize the drive at the moment.
Check cabling, HW, or whether another device files were created for the drive.

[SKR_1]

Your SCSI port may get hanged.

If you can take the reboot of the server, then it will be ok. Your drive will get detected and then you can start fresh ignite backup.

Or try to interchange the drives......but dont think this will work. Can be try.

Thanks

[UXisCool]

I would suggest trying the command:
insf â e
With the -e option, insf reinstalls the special files for pseudo drivers and existing devices. Then I would check that the instance number is still the same as in, I believe your tape device was 0mn ... make sure that it hasn't changed to 1mn.
If all that, still looks good .. is it plugged in and turned on? ... my other question would be .... I believe you have 2 tape drives, are they daisy chained? Can you remove the other one and put a terminator in it's place and see if the tape drive works by itself?