News Group Posts

tape drive busy

From: Tony Lawrence <tony@pcunix.com>
Subject: Re: Help with backup on SCO_SV 3.2 5.0.5 i386
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 05:48:01 -0500

Ulven wrote:
> Thanks, great :-)
> 
> But, one more questions...
> If a backup failes, the tape drive is been blocked until i reboot the
> server..
> example:
> # tape status
> tape: can't open '/dev/nrStp0': Device busy

Do you mean while it's asking you to put in the next tape??? It closes 
the device before asking that, though you will have to wait for it to 
rewind bfore you can use it again.

If that's not what you mean, then you have a hardware problem or this is 
one of those useless cheap Travan pieces of junk I see so much of 
nowadays.  I guess the newer ones are a lot better than what they used 
to make, but I'm still no fan.  If you have one of the old ones, this 
type of behavior is perfectly typical.  It's junk and you should treat 
it accordingly.

If not, then you have scsi configuration issues: bad cabling, 
termination, whatever: see http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/scsi.html


BTW, with 9 gb or less to back up, DVDRAM is a far better backup: see 
http://aplawrence.com/Reviews/dvdram.html

> 
> There are no help in killing PID's etc..
> 
> Is there any other way of killing this session?
> 
> /Ulven
> 
> "Tony Lawrence" <tony@pcunix.com> wrote in message
> news:aqtnmh$jrt$1@pcls4.std.com...
> 
>>Ulven wrote:
>>
>>>>>You've run out of room.
>>>
>>>
>>>How can i run out of room on a 10GB (native) 20GB compressed tape, when
> 
> i
> 
>>>have only 9GB harddrive installed, and it is not full....
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>Insert a new tape, floppy or whatever, type its device name and press
>>>>>enter.
>>>>>
>>>>>You might want to try reading "man cpio", which explains this and tells
>>>>>you how you can even have it spit out a different message.
>>>>
>>>>I guess your real question was "Why have I run out of room?"
>>>>
>>>>I would guess that your tape unit is not set for hardware compression.
>>>>The cpio headers add enough to run you out.  Turn on compression
>>>>
>>>>See http://aplawrence.com/Bofcusm/432.html
>>>
>>>
>>>Thank, i got some tips from this link...
>>>
>>>But, what block size should i use on tapes?
>>>I don't find anything on Seagate's pages :-(
>>
>>Your problem isn't block size, but if you searcxh for "tape" at
>>http://aplawrence.com/mysearch.html you'll find more than enough to
>>satisfy just about anything you want to know.
>>
>>Really, though, you should be using a supertar:
>>http://aplawrence.com/Reviews/supertars.html
>>
>>
>>--
>>
>>
>>Tony Lawrence
>>Unix/Linux Support Tips, How-To's, Tests and more: http://aplawrence.com
>>Free Unix/Linux Consultants list: http://aplawrence.com/consultants.html
>>
> 
> 
> 

-- 


Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux Support Tips, How-To's, Tests and more: http://aplawrence.com
Free Unix/Linux Consultants list: http://aplawrence.com/consultants.html

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