Hi,
Running TSM server 5.2.3.0 on AIX 5.2 ML4. Tape library is 3584 with five
LT0-2 drives.
A few months ago, we experienced several of the 'corrupted tape directory'
problems...more precisely described as a 'corrupted CM index', I think.
This was a firmware problem, whereby a tape cartridge's index would get
messed up, severely degrading performance. The fix was two part: 1)
upgrade to the latest firmware, and 2) when a tape with a bad index was
encountered, use tapeutil to read the entire tape and thus rebuild the
index.
So I upgraded the drive firmware to 47Q0 (which is still current), audited
the library and fixed the handful of tapes that popped up. Understand, of
course, that it's possible that some offsite tapes could be sitting out
there waiting to show up.
My problem/question is this: I have several brand new IBM Ultrium2 tapes
that I have labeled and checked in *since* the microcode upgrade that have
also reported the corrupted index problem. Specifically, four tapes have
shown up, as reported by three of our five drives. All four of these
tapes were written to by TSM at least once, and three of them many times,
without problems before the corrupted index message showed up. Of these
four tapes, three have subsequently been mounted repeatedly by TSM and
have not reported the corrupted index problem since the original report; I
presume TSM's processing of these tapes caused the indexes to be
rebuilt(?).
The fourth tape (AU0132) reported the corrupted index problem this
morning; I performed the tapeutil fix ('space to end of data'), which took
a while, as expected. However, this tape just reported the corrupted
index problem again.
We're fairly new to LTO technology; I'm wondering if this problem with
AU0132 could just be a bad tape? What about the other three tapes that
worked for a while, reported the problem and then were healed? Is this an
unusual occurence for LTO-2 tapes?
I've perused the archives and found a couple of discussions about this
corrupted index problem, but I can't get a feel for how to explain what
I'm seeing. I'm assuming that the firmware update *really* fixed the
problem...it's been out for several months with no subsequent updates.
Any insight would be appreciated!
Regards,
Bill
Bill Kelly
Auburn University OIT
334-844-9917
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