tape drive problem

[Thi Vu]

Hello everyone,

I had been doing 2 tapes fbackup on our system over a couple of months now with no problem until last night. This is the same kind of error I got:

fbackup(1004): session begins on Mon Sep 10 13:45:45 2001
fbackup(3205): unable to read a volume header
fbackup(3024): writing volume 1 to the output file /dev/rmt/c1t5d0BEST
fbackup(3027): ioctl error, can't query outfile
at media record 133795
fbackup(3102): attempting to make this volume salvagable
fbackup(3123): could not read the previous checkpoint record
fbackup(3105): writing 2 EOFs and rewinding the tape
fbackup(3106): please mount a good tape
fbackup(3038): output file /dev/rmt/c1t5d0BEST is not a valid device file for ba
ckup
fbackup(3019): would you like to enter a new output file?
no
fbackup(3022): would you like to continue this session?
no
fbackup(3004): writer aborting
fbackup(1002): Backup did not complete : Reader or Writer process exit

I had tried brand new tape. Cleaned the tape 2X, turn off/on on the tape drive. Same type of error BUT different "...media record number ..." each time I tried different things. It seems that after each different tried, the errors show up earlier (ie: first time the error show up at aroun 45 min into the backup. Second tried, the error show up at 30min and third tried the error show up at 20min.)

When I tried to read the tape's volume head, this is the report I got:

# frecover -V foo -f /dev/rmt/c1t5d0BEST
frecover(2105): did not find expected file marker
frecover(5419): checksum on volume header is incorrect.
frecover(5420): not an fbackup volume; magic value is incorrect
frecover(2105): did not find expected file marker
frecover(5412): Do you wish to try to salvage this volume? [yes no]


I even tried backup using TAR - it worked no problem (I let TAR ran for 2hr5min). I'm running out of options as to what to do next. Thank you in advance for you help.

Thi

[Paul R. Dittrich]

Can fbackup tapes from other systems be read correctly on the affected system?
Do "bad" tapes from the affected system work okay on other systems?

It's possible you have a worn or mis-aligned tape head causing these problems.

HTH,
Paul

[Thi Vu]

Hi Paul,

The answers are yes. The bad tape can be read by other machine and it can also be written to by tar at the "bad" tape drive.


Anyway, the problem was solve. I clean the tape drive 3 times in a row and it worked. I think the tape drive is just acting up. I cleaned it (2x)before when I saw the error - but it did not help I guess the magic number is 3. Thanks for your help.

Thi