Seagate STT3401A on FC2

[Rick Stevens]

Bob McClure Jr wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 20, 2004 at 12:20:51PM -0500, Ken Carr wrote:
> 
>>We're running FC2 (recently upgraded from FC1) on a Dell Power Edge
>>400SC. We have just started trying to use the tape drive. The hardware
>>browser identifies the drive as Seagate STT3401A, /dev/hdd
>>
>>With a tape installed, we get the following:
>>[root at flclxserver root]# mt -f /dev/hdd rewind
>>/dev/hdd: Input/output error
>>
>>What things should we check before suspecting bad hardware?
>>
>>Thanks for any help you can provide.
>>
>>Ken Carr
> 
> 
> You may need to use a more tape-like device name.  I have a Seagate
> STT8000A on /dev/hdd and I call it /dev/nht0.  Check this:
> 
>   cat /proc/ide/ide1/hdd/name
> 
> It may say something like "ht0".  Normally, the non-rewinding version
> is used, /dev/nht0.
> 
> If it doesn't respond to that try
> 
>   modprobe ide-tape
> 
> then try again.
> 
> Here's an interesting thing about my tape.  After a reboot, an attempt
> to back up to it results in a failure like "device busy" or some
> such, but the next and all following work fine.  When I upgraded to
> FC2, I think that problem went away.  I don't recall.  I don't reboot
> that much. :-)

Yes, IDE tapes are normally "/dev/htx" or "/dev/nhtx".  SCSI tapes are
"/dev/stx" and "/dev/nstx".

Bob, you might try "mt -i /dev/ht0 rewoffl" first (rewind and eject).
Sometimes that initializes the drive adequately to prevent such issues.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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