News Group Posts

tape drive cannot open for output

From: Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com>
Subject: Re: weird behaviour accessing tape device
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 05:17:02 GMT
References: <aoiaa1$1jt$1@perki.connect.com.au>
<3DACCFEC.FB2DBAD7@microlite.com>
<aoil35$a58$1@perki.connect.com.au> 

Stuart J. Browne wrote:

> > > I have an OSR5 machine.  Tape inserted into the drive, but cannot access the
> > > rewind, or no rewind device nodes, but can use the control node (x)
> > > successfully.

> > > 421# find . -print | cpio -ocv -O /dev/rStp0
> > > cpio: cannot open </dev/rStp0> for output.

> > > OS: SCO:Unix::5.0.5Eb  rs505a.Unix505.1.0a  oss497c.Unix505.1.0a
> > > oss600a.Unix505  OSS621A.505.SCO.Unix.RTS

> Existing/working setup/install of tape/osr.
> 
> HP LC2000, HP Dat24i (DDS3 Internal, on it's own SCSI (slha) bus, id 2).
> 
> Stopped working properly a day or two ago, and started behaving like this.

Has the machine been rebooted recently (like, say, a day or two ago?)
Put it another way: has the drive worked during the current uptime?

cpio's "cannot open for output" doesn't give us an errno.  Neither,
unfortunately, does tar or shell redirection in sh or ksh.  But csh will
do.  What do you get from:

  # csh -c 'echo foo > /dev/rStp0'

?

(You aren't _supposed_ to be able to write data to /dev/xStp0, and the
various actions like rewind aren't necessarily supposed to work on
rStp0, so all that is red herrings -- the important thing is your
inability to write to rStp0.)

Is some other process currently using the tape drive?

  # fuser /dev/?Stp0
  # lsof /dev/?Stp0   # from ftp://vic.cc.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/lsof

>Bela<
 

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