SONY SDX-300C AIT drive - booting

[Stephen Keane]

Does anyone know if there is a probelm in trying to boot from a SONY SDX-300C AIT drive. I have run Ignite's make_tape_recovery successfully and created a bootable recoevry tape, but if I try and boot the machine from the tape, it hangs. It gets as far as loading the kernel, then sits there. I left it for about 20 minutes, no luck. I've tried a Quantum ATL on the same server and that boots OK.

[Vincent Fleming]

The quickspecs for one HP AIT drive I just looked up (http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ait100/index.html) indicate that the drive is not qualified with HP-UX. It is qualified with just about everything else, though.

So, it may be incompatible with the boot firmware on your machine.

I'm not sure which HP-branded model the SDX-300C is, if there is one. Most likely, there's no firmware support for any AIT model.

The Quantum drives are fully qualified.

Check back occasionally, as firmware upgrades do become available occasionally, and may include support for these devices in the future.

Good luck,

Vince

[Stephen Keane]

I tried following your link, but it didn't work. Whereabouts on the HP site should I be looking (roughly)

[Tom Ward_1]

Hello Stephen,

The link breaks due the closing )
This should work for you.
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ait100/index.html
That link is for an AIT3 tape drive.

http://sony.storagesupport.com/ait/ait_docs.htm
has some info that may help. Particularlly the unix configuration guide. You may have some luck with getting assistance from Sony via live chat as well.

Good luck,
Tom

[Stephen Keane]

Thanks Tom/Vincent.

I've had problems with booting from an Ignite 'bootable' tape (another thread already raised) with the AIT drive, but if I create my own LIF on the tape, it boots OK up to a point before it gets upset because there is no root volume group to mount (as it is booting from a tape). This would appear to indicate that you can boot from the AIT drive, but not with the Ignite bootable tape, especially as I have a problem with an Ignite 'bootable' tape on a DDS drive as well. Ho hum.

[Stephen Keane]

The consensus seems to be that the tape drive is only partially supported. I can read/write files to it. I can boot from it using my own boot lif, but I can't boot from it using Ignite. I'm closing this thread as I believe that the problem is more closely related to Ignite, which I have raised another thread on.
Thanks for the help to date.