SCSI Tape Drive Problems

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

That's hardware, most likely scsi termination issues or cabling issues.

I have seen these errors lots of times when using a high speed scsi
controller
on a tape drive.  Sometimes you can play with the settings on the
controller or flip switches on the drive to get things to work, sometimes
you can use better cables and get things to work, usually I just
go get an older, slower scsi controller.  There's a computer recycler
here that has stacks of aha 2940's  (not the ultra ones) for a couple
bucks a card.

Ted

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kane" <mark at mkproductions.org>
To: <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 8:16 PM
Subject: SCSI Tape Drive Problems


> Hi everyone. I'm experiencing some problems with two tape drives
> attached to this machine. Here is the situation:
>
> I first tried backing up 17GB of data using cpio to a six tape DDS-4
> autoloader with a fresh 20GB/40GB Fuji tape. It stopped writing after
> about 9GB and gave the following error message on the command line,
> but didn't output anything to /var/log/messages:
>
> "Internal overflow, aborting"
>
> If I try to use tar instead of cpio and backup the same 17GB directory
> to the same 20GB native tape, it will give a tape full error way before
> completing.
>
> With that six tape autoloader, I have tried with two different brand new
> DDS-4 20/40 tapes, and the unit itself is brand new from the factory
> and has only written a few GB so far (mainly smaller files, which
> seemed to work fine).
>
> I then tried backing up the same 17GB directory to a Sun DLT 4000 single
> tape unit with a 20GB/40GB tape using cpio. It wrote about 250MB and
> then quit with a "Found End of Volume" error. It outputted a lot of
> errors to /var/log/messages which can be found here:
>
> http://tntpowerhost.com/mixx941/freebsd/sun_tape_errors_1.log
>
> I did another test on the same Sun DLT 4000 with a smaller 1.5GB
> directory and a different tape. This time it wrote about 550MB and then
> gave the same "Found End of Volume" message as before. This time there
> were even more errors in /var/log/messages:
>
> http://tntpowerhost.com/mixx941/freebsd/sun_tape_errors_2.log
>
> I also tested with the smaller 1.5GB directory to the DDS-4 autoloader,
> however that did complete without error.
>
> At this point I was running "6.2-PRERELEASE #18: Wed Nov 15 11:12:09"
> from last month, so today I cvsupped to RELENG_6 and rebuilt.
>
> Trying the same 1.5GB directory using the Sun DLT 4000 after the update
> resulted in it writing about 200MB of data and then stopping with the
> "Found end of volume" message again, as well as errors
> in /var/log/messages (however not as many this time):
>
> http://tntpowerhost.com/mixx941/freebsd/sun_tape_errors_3.log
>
> Any suggestions on what to check or any ideas on how to proceed would
> be great. I don't think it's both tape drives failing or bad tapes
> because pretty much the same thing happens with two different drives
> (one of which is completely new), and four different tapes (two of those
> completely new). I suppose it could be a problem with the SCSI
> controller (Adaptec 2940U2W), but I'd like to rule out any software
> issues before having to buy any additional hardware.
>
> Thanks very much in advance.
>
> -Mark
> Dmesg: http://tntpowerhost.com/mixx941/freebsd/dmesg.121906
>
> -- 
> Internet Radio:
> Party107 (Trance/Electronic) - http://www.party107.com
> Rock 101.9 The Edge (Rock) - http://www.rock1019.net
>
> IRC:
> MIXXnet IRC Network - irc.mixxnet.net (Nick: MIXX941)
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
"freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>