Networker

Re: [Networker] Reading/writing SAIT1 tapes on Linux that were written by solaris?

2005-12-02 00:45:37
Subject: Re: [Networker] Reading/writing SAIT1 tapes on Linux that were written by solaris?
From: Oscar Olsson <spam1 AT QBRANCH DOT SE>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 06:19:34 +0100
On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Tim Mooney wrote:

TM> More wild guesses:
TM> 
TM> Variable Block Size support is something that's either on or off in the
TM> drive itself.  The "setblk 0" you sent it (which really just sent the
TM> appropriate ioctl() to the device) flipped the variable block size switch
TM> in the drive.
TM> 
TM> In the absense of external stimuli (i.e. if some other command or a
TM> re-initialization of the device driver doesn't come along and change it
TM> back to fixed block size), that setting should persist in the drive,
TM> even though the host is rebooted.
TM> 
TM> The question is, will it persist if the drive is power cycled?  I'm
TM> betting "no".
TM> 
TM> Care to test that and report back?  ;-)

I got it to work in the end. I'm not sure of which setting/configuration 
got it working, but ofcourse there is a chance that you are right. :) The 
modprobe st stuff didn't work either, so I removed that.

What I did through, was ofcourse the mt stuff mentioned previously in the 
thread. I also added the envrionment variable 
"NSR_DEV_BLOCK_SIZE_SAIT_1=64" to the networker startup script. And I 
configured all drives to use 64k block size from the networker GUI instead 
of "handler default". Finally, I installed the HP support pack for Linux, 
since its a HP DL385 server, which among other things compiles a new HBA 
driver and installs it. I'm not sure that a new driver was indeed required 
though.

What got me confused in the end was that I somehow managed to manually put 
one tape back in a slot where it shouldn't be, and thus the networker 
inventory wasn't up-to-date any more. So I thought I mounted a good tape, 
but it turned out to be a blank tape. After I had reinventoried the 
library, wverything seemed and seems to work fine now.

Anyway, if I experience any problem when the library is power cycled next 
time, I'll post a follow-up to the list.

//Oscar

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