ANR8420E DEFINE PATH: An I/O error occurred while accessing drive TAPE0.

[edjaffe]

I'm trying to configure tape resources for a new TSM instance we're bringing up in Linux for z. It's a very simple configuration with four FICON-attached 3590-H11 tape drives in a manual library. The tape drives are attached to the Linux guest. Linux see the drives and I was able to vary them online using the chccwdev command.

I defined the library and drives to TSM. When I try to define the path I get "ANR8420E DEFINE PATH: An I/O error occurred while accessing drive TAPE0." and no other messages. No error codes, no sense codes, nothing.

define path server1 tape0 srctype=server desttype=drive library=manualmount device=/dev/btibm0
ANR2017I Administrator SERVER_CONSOLE issued command: DEFINE PATH server1 tape0 srctype=server desttype=drive library=manualmount
device=/dev/btibm0
ANR8420E DEFINE PATH: An I/O error occurred while accessing drive TAPE0.

Here is my library:

q library manualmount f=d
ANR2017I Administrator SERVER_CONSOLE issued command: QUERY LIBRARY manualmount f=d

Library Name: MANUALMOUNT
Library Type: MANUAL
ACS Id:
Private Category:
Scratch Category:
WORM Scratch Category:
External Manager:
Shared: No
LanFree:
ObeyMountRetention:
Primary Library Manager:
WWN:
Serial Number:
AutoLabel: Yes
Reset Drives: No
Relabel Scratch:
Last Update by (administrator): SERVER_CONSOLE
Last Update Date/Time: 11/05/2011 10:02:26 AM

Here is drive TAPE0:

q drive manualmount tape0 f=d
ANR2017I Administrator SERVER_CONSOLE issued command: QUERY DRIVE manualmount tape0 f=d

Library Name: MANUALMOUNT
Drive Name: TAPE0
Device Type: UNKNOWN
On-Line: Yes
Read Formats:
Write Formats:
Element:
Drive State: UNKNOWN
Volume Name:
Allocated to:
WWN:
Serial Number:
Last Update by (administrator): SERVER_CONSOLE
Last Update Date/Time: 11/05/2011 10:49:33 PM
Cleaning Frequency (Gigabytes/ASNEEDED/NONE): NONE

Linux sees the tape drive:

# lstape
FICON/ESCON tapes (found 4):
TapeNo BusID CuType/Model DevType/Model BlkSize State Op MedState
0 0.0.1500 3590/60 3590/11 auto UNUSED --- UNLOADED

Thinking there might be a permission problem, I set the permissions on the device to match those of the server:

# ls -l /dev/bt*
brw-rw----. 1 tsminst1 tsmsrvrs 252, 0 Nov 6 00:12 btibm0

Anyone seen this before? Any ideas what might be wrong?

Ed Jaffe
Phoenix Software International
El Segundo, CA

 

[moon-buddy]

Have you defined the drive?

 

[edjaffe]

Both the library and the drive must be defined before you can define the path. Otherwise, you will get a different error message that says the drive has not yet been defined.

 

[moon-buddy]

Both the library and the drive must be defined before you can define the path. Otherwise, you will get a different error message that says the drive has not yet been defined.

OK, you have done that. Have you installed the right drivers?

 

[sapphire]

the mismatch of wwn and serial numbers of library and the server could also cause this problem . You could verify if your wwns and serial number on the server matches to that of the library .

 

[edjaffe]

SOLVED! (BUT NOT HAPPY!)

RHEL 6 supports FICON channel-attached drives. I can read/write to 3590 tape using native Linux commands such as tar (for backing up Linux files).

Unfortunately, TSM requires FCP/SCSI connected drives. This is a limitation of the IBM tape driver that TSM uses (lin_tape).

When researching the requisites for TSM on Linux, I used the charts entitled "IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Supported Devices for Linux" http://www.ibm.com/software/sysmgmt/products/support/IBM_TSM_Supported_Devices_for_Linux.html to be sure our 3590-H tape drives were supported. They are listed as being supported with the IBM device driver; no mention of a FCP/SCSI requirement.

The device driver, available from IBM Fix Central, is lin_taped-1.61.0-rhel6.s390x.rpm. I did not know until I looked at the trace that the driver does not recognize FICON channel-attached drives:

lin_taped Mon Nov 7 22:29:17 2011
/dev/IBMtape opened.
lin_taped Mon Nov 7 22:29:17 2011
Failed to detect any tape drives.
lin_taped Mon Nov 7 22:29:17 2011
Failed to detect any changer devices.

I opened PMR 81519,227,000 with IBM on this subject. TSM support confirms that the IBM lin_tape driver supports only FCP/SCSI and not channel attached drives.

:-(

 

[edjaffe]

TSM does not support channel attached tape.