Solaris

Hello All,

I am facing some problem with magnetic tape drive.

Backups are coming properly with the tapes that we had previously mt st give o/p as below ..

root@server1:/
2ksh# mt st
Quantum Super DLT 320 tape drive:
sense key(0x6)= Unit Attention residual= 0 retries= 0
file no= 0 block no= 0

But we purchased some few more tapes for which backups are not coming .. performed seperate write test but it fails as well

root@server1:/dev/rmt
7ksh# tar -xvf /file1
tar: tape blocksize error

mt st gives the following o/p

root@server1:/
1ksh# mt st
Quantum Super DLT 320 tape drive:
sense key(0x0)= No Additional Sense residual= 0 retries= 0
file no= 0 block no= 0


The tape specifications of the old and new tapes are same.

Is the problem lying in the difference that we can see in the sense key?

source: docs.sun.com: Solaris Handbook for SMCC Peripherals


* Your system is able to access the tape drive and a tape cartridge is present, if the following status is displayed:


Archive QIC-150 tape drive:
sense key(0x0)= nosense residual= 0 retries= 0
file no= 0 block no= 0

sense key= nosense indicates that your system was able to access the tape and there were no errors. You can then use any of the backup commands described in the following sections.

* The following information tells you that the tape drive was just reset, powered on, or a tape cartridge was recently installed.


Archive QIC-150 tape drive:
sense key(0x6)= unit attention residual= 0 retries= 0
file no= 0 block no=0

In this case, execute the mt -f /dev/rmt/0 status command again until the sense key(0x6)= unit attention advisory message is replaced with the sense key(0x0)= nosense message.

* If the following status is displayed, your system is unable to access the tape.


/dev/rmt/0: no tape loaded or drive offline

In this case, insert a tape and execute the mt -f /dev/rmt/0 status command again.




Also, to further test have you tried doing a lowlevel tar and restore? I think the device for low level tar should be /dev/rmt/0l or 1l (L)