ADSM-L

IO errors on tape drives

2002-06-26 16:01:06
Subject: IO errors on tape drives
From: Guillaume Gilbert <guillaume.gilbert AT DESJARDINS DOT COM>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 15:58:29 -0400
Hi there

Here is our setup. We use Gresham's DistribuTAPE software to manage our STK 
9840 drives, which are in an STK 9310 (BIG mainframe library).The drives are 
fiber attached
through a Brocade silkworm switch.

We originally used Gresham's AdvanTAPE driver with the generictape device 
class. After reading that this class could not do lanfree backups and library 
sharing, I decided
to use TSM's native device driver for these drives which are supported 
according to tivoli's website. Now changing a device class is not a small task. 
You have to migrate
all your tapes to the new class and 600 9840 tapes at 20 gb a piece is a long 
and tedeous process. Since then, we've been having all sorts of IO errors and 
the more
recent the Server version, the worst it is. My production server is at 4.1.3. 
When the errors pop up its usually this one :

05/21/2002 09:38:47      ANR8302E I/O error on drive TSMCPLX9840E (/dev/mt3)
                          (OP=READ, CC=206, KEY=FF, ASC=FF, ASCQ=FF,
                          SENSE=**NONE**, Description=General SCSI failure).  
Refer
                          to Appendix D in the 'Messages' manual for recommended
                          action.

which is not too bad, just updates the tape to readonly and dismounts it. We 
also get CC=205 and some CC=40*. Luckily for me I have a test server around to 
test AIX5.1
which is connected to the sam drives so I thought I'd have better luck with 
4.2.2.*. Well it's worse, every time a dismount occurs I get this error :

06/26/2002 15:36:39      ANR8302E I/O error on drive TSMCPLX9840E (/dev/mt0)
                          (OP=OFFL, Error Number=78, CC=205, KEY=FF, ASC=FF,
                          ASCQ=FF, SENSE=**NONE**, Description=SCSI adapter
                          failure).  Refer to Appendix D in the 'Messages' 
manual
                          for recommended action.

And the tape is no longer readable. I've had a PMR open for a month now on this 
thing and finally its up to level 2 support.

Does anybody out there have the same setup as I do. Any help would be 
appreciated.

Guillaume Gilbert
CGI Canada
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