Ultrium Tape Backup Failures.

[Jerry Jaynes]

I need help!!!!

We purchased 2 new L2000 servers, one of which has an SC10 disk array. Both are running 11.0

We have had random and I emphasize random failures druing fbackup. As a result, we are hesitant to move to the new platform.

I have gone so far as to pull one machine off line, strip and reload with all (hopefully) the patches required to get the tape going. It runs fast and clean, but when it fails (Almost entirely during scheduled backups, I have no error.

I have used an stape_trace c program to get a dump of what the scsi was doing, but other than a general "It looks like a scsi error" from tech support, HELLO!!! I have had no luck.

This is getting desperate. We have changed drives, controllers, cables, tapes, reloaded the OS, moved the controller to another slot, reset the system bios to default, reset everything to default and still get failures.

If anyone has any suggestions, I am wide open.

Sincerely,

Jerry Jaynes

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

Only thing I can see from your post that hasn't been done is look at the firmware of the tape drives. There has been a lot of problems that have been solved recently with the upgrading of firmware on tape drives particularly DLT's.

-Michael

[Frank Slootweg]

Adding to the other responses:

What about patches, especially (SCSI and tape) driver patches, I/O patches, kernel patches, etc.?

Any (related) messages in your syslog or/and dmesg(1M) output? (Is dmesg(1M) set up per its manual page or root's default crontab?) Note that both of these logs are buffered, so it may take some time for messages to appear.

*Which* Ultrium tape drive do you have, i.e. manufacturer/supplier, product number, etc.?

[harry d brown jr]

What kind of tape drive and what is the scsi path? Also, have you tried replacing the scsi terminator?

live free or die
harry