Make_tape_recovery completed unsuccessfully

[Senthilkumaran.T]

I have executed the following command to do the make_tape recovery.
/opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -AIv -a /dev/rmt/0mn

I found the following error meesage.
1057+0 records in
1056+1 records out
I/O error
ERROR: /usr/bin/dd if=/var/tmp/uxinstlf.recovery of=/dev/rmt/0mn bs=2k failed
to write LIF onto tape.
ERROR: Failed to generate LIF on tape .

Thanks
senthil

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Here are a few things that I would check initially:

1) Clean the tape drive. It may be dirty and thus not work correctly.

2) Try another tape. You may just have a bad tape.

3) Try just using tar, cpio, fbackup or something to write something to and read something from a tape to verify that the tape drive is working correctly.

[linuxfan]

Hi Senthil,

Patrick already suggested quite a few things.

Most of the times, cleaning the tape drive /using a different tape helps.

You could also try using dd to check if the new tape is ok.

-Ramesh

[Magdi KAMAL]

Hi,

As Patrick said, it's really one of three issue:

1. Cleaning the drive with a cleaning tape.
2. If it perssiste, try another tape.
3. If it perssiste, change the tape drive.

And after it should works.

Magdi

[Victor_5]

You have got excellent replies. In most of the case, cleaning device or changing tape can helps. One more point is:
An Ignite make+recovery tape contains a LIF followed by a tar archive. To verify the LIF, you can do:

# mkdir /tmp/myignite
# copy_boot_tape -u /dev/rmt/0mn -b -d /tmp/myignite

If the LIF is good, you will see its contents displayed. Otherwise, you will see a message like:
"lifls: Can't list /tmp/ignitetest//bootimage; not a LIF volume".

If this is the case, try a freshed tape on a cleaned drive and start a new make_recovery.