i use the "get on the latest firmware first" option as an easy way to get on 
the latest firmware without having to do all of the paperwork for planned 
upgrades.  "it's broke and needs patching now!"

when they correct a known issue (bug), the fix could also inadvertantly fix a 
different issue, the issue that you are experiencing.  if it doesn't fix your 
issue, then it forces them to now look at it much more closely.

i had an issue a couple of weeks ago where we've been using lto5 drives for 8 
months with no issues, but we are only writing to lto4 media.  we put on our 
first batch of lto5 media and all tapes gave us errors and went to a partially 
written FROZEN state:

/var/log/messages:
Nov 17 19:12:40 tldd[18902]: TLD(0) MountTape L50000 on drive 1, from slot 51
Nov 17 19:12:41 tldcd[18908]: Processing MOUNT, TLD(0) drive 1, slot 51, 
barcode L50000          , vsn L50000
Nov 17 19:42:19 bptm[9924]: TapeAlert Code: 0x03, Type: Warning, Flag: HARD 
ERROR, from drive lto5_drv1 (index 1), Media Id L50000
Nov 17 19:42:19 bptm[9924]: TapeAlert Code: 0x06, Type: Critical, Flag: WRITE 
FAILURE, from drive lto5_drv1 (index 1), Media Id L50000
Nov 17 19:42:19 bptm[9924]: TapeAlert Code: 0x14, Type: Critical, Flag: CLEAN 
NOW, from drive lto5_drv1 (index 1), Media Id L50000
Nov 17 19:42:19 bptm[9924]: TapeAlert Code: 0x27, Type: Warning, Flag: 
DIAGNOSTICS REQ., from drive lto5_drv1 (index 1), Media Id L50000
Nov 17 19:42:20 tldd[18902]: TLD(0) DismountTape L50000 from drive 1

~netbackup/db/media/errors:
11/17/11 19:42:08 L50000 1 WRITE_ERROR lto5_drv1
11/17/11 19:42:18 L50000 1 POSITION_ERROR lto5_drv1
11/17/11 19:42:19 L50000 1 TAPE_ALERT lto5_drv1 0x24001000 0x02000000

ouch!  so i opened a support ticket and they thought it could be bad tapes (all 
of them?), but suggested a firmware upgrade.  how could that fix it?  lto5 
drives should be able to write to lto5 media. would we have had this issue if 
we had used lto5 media 8 months ago with the firmware that was on the drives 
when they were new?  so i upgraded the drives to B6W0 and it fixed the issue.  
i now get twice as much data written per tape in each slot of the library.

jerald

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu 
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of 
Lightner, Jeff
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 8:31 AM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] IBM LTO-5 Drive Question (8.0gbps FC, FW: B5BF)

A good thing to ask vendors when they suggest you patch software or update 
firmware is for the documentation for that patch/firmware that shows where it 
fixes your SPECIFIC issue.

Telling people to patch/update has always been viewed by me as just a vendor 
stalling tactic for the most part.  You should of course do planned 
patching/updating as regular maintenance but usually when it is suggested 
during troubleshooting it has little value and doesn't solve the issue.  In 
more than 20 years I can only think of 2-3 occasions where a vendor when so 
challenged was actually able to show where the suggested patch/firmware 
specifically mentioned the issue I was having.

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu 
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of 
WALLEBROEK Bart
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 7:12 AM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu; jpiszcz AT lucidpixels DOT com
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] IBM LTO-5 Drive Question (8.0gbps FC, FW: B5BF)

Make sure to run the latest firmware on the tape drives (B6W0).  IBM 'claims' 
that this will solve all media issues.

Best Regards,
Bart WALLEBROEK


Message: 1
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:23:10 -0500
From: "Justin Piszcz" <jpiszcz AT lucidpixels DOT com>
Subject: [Veritas-bu] IBM LTO-5 Drive Question (8.0gbps FC, FW: B5BF)
To: <veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu>
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi,

I read on this list awhile back there were some media issues others were
having with the IBM LTO-5 tape drives; after an update, things were better.
Currently running B5BF and notice a lot of '(86) - media read errors' on
separate drives in different locations, has anyone seen this, one could
chalk it up to some bad tape media but because it seems to occur across >2
drives in >1 location I was curious if anyone else had seen this issue and
if so, which F/W where they running that seemed to solve the issue?

Drive: IBM LTO-5 8.0gbps F/C
F/W: B5BF
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