I/O-Error reading my tapes

[Jim Deitch]

In article <936 at wa4mei.UUCP> rsj at wa4mei.UUCP (Randy Jarrett) writes:
>In <950 at mwtech.UUCP> martin at mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) writes:
>
>>Some days ago I upgraded from ISC 386/ix 2.02 to 2.2. Since I wanted to
>>re-partition my disk I made a full installation. Now I have some
>>problems (or rather inconveniences) reading the tape cartridges with
>>my backups. My tape drive is an ARCHIVE ST-600 with a SC-499R controller.
>
>>The problem is, that "cpio -i" as well as "dd" end with an I/O-Error
>>on each and every tape, making it impossible to get to some of the
>>files which are the last ones on the tape. (It's possible to play some
>>tricks with pipelines thru "dd" and conv=sync,noerror to fully read in
>>the tapes, so I had nothing really lost.)
>
>>I'm sure, that the behavior was correct with 2.02, since I did a
>>"cpio -t" on all the tapes after making the backup, just to be sure
>>that everything was there.
>
>>What further bothers me is the fact that even "cpio -o" ends with I/O-
>>errors now, so I assume that not all files get out to the tape. (Of
>>course I could also circumvent this by backing up a rather large file
>>which I don't really need as the last one.)
>
>>But this are all work-arounds, which make tape handling rather inconvenient,
>>especially with the current bug in Archives tape drivers, that slows the
>>things down after two or three operations that end with I/O-Errors,
>>making it necessary to re-boot very often.
>
>>Does anybody outhere now what's going on?
>
>
>>-- 
>>Martin Weitzel, email: martin at mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83
>
>Are you getting the errors when you make the tapes or when you
>read them back in to verify them.  If it is on the read it might
>be the same problem I have seen before that is caused if you don't
>use the 'B' option with the cpio when reading in.
>
>On the problem with the drivers, I havn't seen or heard of that one
>before. The main problem that seems to be happening when you get an 
>error or abort the read or write of a tape is that you end up with a
>hung process that can't be killed and you can't kill and also the tape
>is unusable until you reboot the system.
>
>
I have this problem with the -B and without.
If you abort a read or write the bug seems to happen quicker.
A reboot is necessary to make the tape useable again.  The hung
process is not killable at all.

Interestingly, I talked to a gentleman at Archive (I lost his name)
the Wednesday before thanksgiving.  He said that he was going to take
a system home with ISC 2.2 over the holiday.  He also said that
Archive hasn't heard of this problem before.  I know I reported it 3
times to them!  I haven't tried to call back in to Archive to find out
if he could recreate the problem.  Maybe if Archive has news they will
post something.


Jim

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