On Mon February 24 2003 11:47, rwong AT mrs.mni.mcgill DOT ca wrote:
>Hum.  I thought the same originally as well.  But I have about a
>dozen tapes reacting the same way.  Half are new and half are old.
>  I use vxa-1 v17 tapes.  I find it unlikely that so many are
> defective/went bad all together in one shot.  What does your
> experience say?
>
>robin

I'm assuming that there is a cleaning tape available, and that it 
has been used?

How many hours on the drive?

And what does the drives propaganda say about head life?

Another ugly thought comes to mind.  Is it possible that drives BOT 
sensor is bad and its rewinding clear to the leader end of the 
tape?  I had that happen to a QIC drive once, and once to a travan 
(spit) but they either jerked the tape in two, or burned up the 
drive rollers in the cartridge, or both.  Not having any knowledge 
of the vxa cartridge, 1 reel or two, I'm a bit hamstrung here on 
that point, sorry.

>On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Thu February 20 2003 17:50, rwong AT mrs.mni.mcgill DOT ca wrote:
>> >This is what I did at the shell...
>> >
>> ># Pop in a tape.
>> >% mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind
>> >% mt -f /dev/nst0 fsf 1
>> >% dd if=/dev/nst0 skip=1 bs=32k | tar tvf -
>> >dd: reading `/dev/nst0': Input/output error
>> >0+0 records in
>> >0+0 records out
>> >
>> ># Let's try another file marker on the same tape.
>> >% mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind
>> >% mt -f /dev/nst0 fsf 10   # I just want to look at the file
>> > header. % dd if=/dev/nst0 count=1 bs=32k
>> >AMANDA: FILE 20030213 host1 /boot lev 1 comp N program
>> > /bin/gtar To restore, position tape at start of file and run:
>> >        dd if=<tape> bs=32k skip=1 | /bin/gtar -f... -
>> >
>> >1+0 records in
>> >1+0 records out
>> >
>> >
>> >On the first dd attempt, this showed up in the log:
>> >Feb 20 17:30:24 host1 kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Info
>> > fld=0x8000, Current st09:00: sense key Medium Error Feb 20
>> > 17:30:24 host1 kernel: Additional sense indicates Recorded
>> > entity not found
>> >
>> >
>> >I can read the other file markers...except file marker 1.
>> >
>> >robin
>>
>> This is resembling a bad media error more and more.
>>
>> >On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> >> > If I attempt to access file markers greater than 1, I don't
>> >> > have any problems and there are no syslog messages.  But if
>> >> > i attempt to access file 1, it keels over and I get
>> >> > messages in syslog.
>> >>
>> >> Would you describe what you are doing to access file 1?
>> >> Give the command line, output, and messages.
>> >
>> >[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
>
>[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.23% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly