SuperDLT on a K-class server?

[Joel Shank]

I have just connected a Quantum SuperDLT1 tape drive to my K460 HP9000 server running HPUX 11.00 and am getting I/O errors on it. Someone told me that HP does not support SDLT on any HP9000 server. Does anyone know if this is true? Does any one have any SDLT tape drives connected to a K-class server? Does anyone have SDLT connected to any N-class server?

Any help would be appreciated?

Thanks,jls

[Emiel van Grinsven]

jls,

You can use a SDLT but need a specific patch.
For 11.0 --> PHKL_27303
For 10.2 --> PHKL_27304

Good luck.
Emiel

[melvyn burnard]

So what type of intereface card have you used? HP-PB? &W or SE?

[Joel Shank]

The SCSI interface card is an HSC FW (product number A2969A).

I will get the PHKL_27303 patch to see if that fixes my problem.

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

As far as I know, SDLT drives are LVD only, so no matter what patch you install, it cannot be directly connected to a K-Class server, which only supports HVD SCSI.

HTH,
Vince

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

I suggest you remove the SDLT drive from the K-Class immeidately, since LVD (Low Voltage Differential) works on a different voltage than HVD (High Voltage Differential), which could damage your drive/SCSI HBA.

If you REALLY want to get a SDLT to work on a K-class, you should buy an HVD-to-LVD converter. www.paralan.com offers such converter.

HTH,
Vince

[Joel Shank]

STK informs me that the SDLT drives I have are High Voltage drives, so this should not be my problem.

I would think somone out there has a SDLT drive connected to their HP9000 server?

[Joel Shank]

Installed suggested patch and the newest fbackup patch. fbackup is still getting errors, not when backing up, but when frecover, saying "did not find expected file marker"

tar "seems" to work, but I can't be sure it will ALWAYS work.

I guess nobody else is using SDLT on HP servers. That's too bad...

[Martin Johnson]

Have STK confirm you have the proper driver associated with the SDLT. Also confirm you have the correct firmware version for both the K and the SDLT drive.

HTH
Marty

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

Nice to know that Quantum still makes HVD drives.

As for your question... I'm afraid fbackup does not support SDLTs.

Hardware-wise, you're good... Your SDLT can sustain an 11Mb/s native transfer rate, your A2969 can go up to 15Mb/s.

But I doubt whether native backup utilities like tar, especially fbackup, can work well with your beauty.

HTH,
Vince

[Michael Duthie]

This device not currently supported in HPUX, it is a pre merger product.

[Emiel van Grinsven]

[quote]As for your question... I'm afraid fbackup does not support SDLTs[/quote]
Sorry but you are wrong in this.
I'll not say anything about LVD or HVD but I'm absolutely sure that fbackup can work with SDLT.

[Michael Duthie]

Emiel,

It may work, but its not supported.

[Dietmar Konermann]

Just a short notice...
fbackup does not contain any "hard" dependencies on specific tape devices. So it doesn't check for inquiry strings, vendor IDs or things like that. Instead it asks the tape driver for specific features using ioctl's (especially MTIOCGET).

So, in general, it's an kernel (tape driver) issue, if fbackup rejects a tape device type.

In the case of SuperDLT1 the stape driver was enhanced to regcognize the device (however, this does not mean full support).

If fbackup works... then this meas that the drive was recognized.

In your case the frecover fails... and this is indeed a known and still not resolved problem. The SuperDLT1 unfortunately rejects any reads <4bytes (you may verify this using dd bs=1) and frecover unfortunately uses such reads during its header validation. Difficult to say who's fault this is.

So this is today's status:

1) frecover needs the ability to read with IOs <4bytes, and
2) SuperDLT1 does not support that.

Possible approaches:

1) The drive's firmware is changed, or
2) fbackup is changed.

The other possibility is to use frecover's remote mode also locally (localhost:/dev/rmt/..., see man page).

Best regards...
Dietmar.

[Brian Waddick]

Dietmar,

How sure are you about SDLT's not being able to write <4bytes?

I have never heard of such a thing for any tape drive.

Does LTO/Ultirum have this problem also? That would be bad.

I am very curious to know