I'm trying to set a backup to tape of a machine using flexbackup. However any attempt to write to the tape drive (via either flexbackup or just tar) results in "/dev/st0: Input/output error"
The machine seems to recognise the drive (HP Storageworks Ultrium 448) and that there's a tape in it and "mt status" seems to work… "mt -f /dev/st0 rewind" or "erase" throw no errors…
root@stor001:/# mt status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x42 (LTO-2).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN
root@stor001:/# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: HL-DT-ST Model: DVDRAM GSA-4084N Rev: KS02
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 05
Host: scsi2 Channel: 00 Id: 03 Lun: 00
Vendor: HP Model: Ultrium 2-SCSI Rev: S65D
Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
"tell" does however
root@stor001:/# mt -f /dev/st0 tell
/dev/st0: Input/output error
Based on a forum post I found, I tried:
root@stor001:/# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nst0 bs=1024 count=10
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
10240 bytes (10 kB) copied, 5.0815 s, 2.0 kB/s
which gave the person on the forum an error but seems to work for me.
If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears…
Best Answer
1) first are you sure to use the correct version of mt ?
should return "mt-st" name of binary.
If you only get "mt", then download the mt-st package.
2) "tell" is only available since SCSI-2, so try this once after each load of tape.
then try again the "tell"
3) just a remark : use "/dev/nst0" instead of "/dev/st0", or the drive is rewinded after each operation...