>Along those lines, here's what I see in dmesg after it finally fails: > >ide-tape: ht0: DSC timeout >ide-tape: ht0: position_tape failed in discard_pipeline() >ide-tape: ht0: DSC timeout >hdc: DMA disabled >hdc: ATAPI reset complete >ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 10, key = 2, asc = 4 ascq =1 >ide-tape: Couldn't write a filemark
Well, those timeouts and resets can't be a good thing. I don't have the manuals for your specific drive (in fact I couldn't find it on the Seagate web site -- what kind of drive is it and what kind of tapes are you using?), but assuming it is roughly like the ones I have, the "key = 2, asc = 4 ascq =1" translates to "drive not ready, calibration in progress". Also, this confirms that some type of hardware error is happening. >> What happens if you try to amlabel one of your already labelled tapes? > >I get: > >rewinding, reading label DailySet101, tape is active >rewinding >tape not labeled > >so I guess it refused to do it. Is this what is supposed to happen? Sorry. I should have told you to use "-f" on amlabel to coerce it into rewriting the label even though the tape looks active. Now that I think about it some more, though, this can lead you down a path of other problems and is probably not a good idea to pursue. >> What happens if you run amcheck with the -w option ... >After switching to the tape Amanda wants to see next, I get: > >Amanda Tape Server Host Check >------------------------- >Tape DailySet100 is writable >Tape DailySet100 label ok >Server check took 4.565 seconds > >(brought to you by Amanda 2.4.2p2) > >Seems okay, is this what you expect? Yes, that looks normal. >I did this, and it seemed to work fine. No I/O errors, just nice little >messages from dd confirming reads and writes of so many blocks. I had 30 or >so writes in the script, and they all seemed to complete okay. Sigh. Oh, well. It's usually too much to ask for that hardware will misbehave with easy tests :-). >... Switched to the other IDE controller, still get the same behavior. That leaves the cable, the drive itself, or tremendously bad luck picking several tapes that all fail (my money is on the drive, or maybe the cable). >Steve Stanners John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
