Tape Device Drivers

[Keely Jackson]

Hi

I have a compaq TZ877 tape drive which when I do an ioscan shows as claimed by the 'tape2' driver. Is there any way I can change it to be claimed by the 'stape' driver instead.

It won't work as it is, so out of curiosity I would like to try it. (Autoloader has been configured and works ok).


Cheers

Keely

[Helen French]

Hi,

You can make use of the 'mksf' command for making a special file for this device, with a special driver.

See man pages of 'mksf'. You can create the special file with the driver name you want, the H/W address you need, with the Class name you need on any devices. It will work only if your device is compatible with these paramters.

HTH,
Shiju

[Steven Gillard_2]

You can override the default driver by using the 'driver' statement in the /stand/system file. I've only seen this done with the spt driver so I don't know how effective it'll be with stape, but it might be worth a try. Add the following line to /stand/system:

driver stape

where is the hardware path to your tape device. You then need to rebuilt the kernel and reboot. And make sure you keep a backup copy of the kernel in case this doesn't have the desired effect!

Regards,
Steve

[Keely Jackson]

Hi again

I have tried to create the device file using mksf -d stape -H 10/40/8.2.0 and I get the error

mksf: Couldn't find driver matching arguments

but if I do and lsdev -d stape it shows the driver as present with a major number of 205. So I then created a device file using mknod but still cannot access the drive. Am I to assume that it just is not compatible?

Cheer for your help so far

Keely

[Helen French]

Hi,

Which OS version ? This was an error with old 10.x 'mksf' command, but was resolved by patches.

Did you specify the correct syntax ? This can be only a testing. The driver which is identified by the system will be the right one !

HTH,
Shiju

[Keely Jackson]

Hi

It is v11.0.

The syntax I used was:

mksf -d stape -H 10/4/8.2.0

have I missed something off ?

The only reason I think the driver may be incorrect is that we have compaq tape drives (allbeit newer) on a couple of other machines and they use the sptape driver rather than tape2.

Keely

[pap]

You can do following.
Remove the tape2 driver from your kernel.
Make sure you have stape drive in your kernel.
Then reboot the system.
Now, your tape drive should take stape driver.

Thanks,
-Piyush.

[Helen French]

Hi,

Try including the device file name along with mksf command.

Also if you have other systems, with the same type of device, then do 'lssf' there and findout the detail configuration of the device file and apply it here.

mksf should work fine in 11.x

HTH,
Shiju

[Steven Gillard_2]

You need to bind the stape driver to the device before the mksf command is going to be useful. See my response above - adding the driver statement to the system file should have the desired effect.

Regards,
Steve

[Keely Jackson]

Many thanks for all your many suggestions and help.

Next time the machine is rebooted I'll bind the driver to the device and see what happens.

[Jordan Bean]

Just the other day I attached a TZ87 tape drive to our C3600 running HPUX 11.00 and it was claimed by the stape driver.

This FAQ at Compaq may explain this:

http://www.compaq.com/support/storage/open_vendor/techtips/mvtapes/hp/hpdltfaq.html

[Frank Slootweg]

tape2 and stape are drivers which are used for *different* types of SCSI interfaces, i.e. they use a different *internal* bus (NIO/HP-PB versus HSC/GSC). If the system currently uses tape2, then most likely that is the *correct* driver and you should not try to change it.

To be sure, post the "ioscan -f -H ..." output for the *interface*. I.e. do a "ioscan -f", look up the tape drive, then go 'up' and look at the interface ("H/W Type" is "INTERFACE") and then use the "H/W Path" of that line as the "-H" parameter.

Of course the hardware manual of the computer should also tell you whether or not it can have NIO/HP-PB interfaces and if so at which addresses.