Thanks for the info and examples. However, I am at a loss to understand why I need this, now. Especially when 2-identical (well, I guess something is different ;--) servers are acting differently. I have never had to do this with *ANY* other of my now 7-servers. Unless hardware changed, a reboot would not change the order of the tape drives. Zoltan Forray TSM Software & Hardware Administrator Virginia Commonwealth University UCC/Office of Technology Services zfor...@vcu.edu - 804-828-4807 Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable organizations will never use email to request that you reply with your password, social security number or confidential personal information. For more details visit http://infosecurity.vcu.edu/phishing.html
From: "Sergio O. Fuentes" <sfuen...@umd.edu> To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Date: 09/27/2010 01:43 PM Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Looking for SAN/tape experts assistance Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU> I'm doing this work right now for a big project here. My first endeavor into Linux. The lin_tape drivers for 6.2 will require a .rules file in /etc/udev/rules.d (or wherever your udev stuff lives) mainly because of the instance owner/group requirements to run 6.2 dsmserv processes. Unless you can alter your default udev rules for EVERYTHING, then you'll need the .rule file to assign ownership and mode parameters for the tape devices. Mine, so far, looks like this: #cat /etc/udev/rules.d/98-lin_tape.rules KERNEL=="IBMchanger*", SYSFS{primary_path}=="Primary", SYSFS{serial_num}=="0000078150090402", OWNER="tsminst1", MODE="0600", SYMLINK="lin_tape/IBMchanger137B" KERNEL=="IBMchanger*", SYSFS{primary_path}=="Alternate", SYSFS{serial_num}=="0000078150090402", OWNER="tsminst1", MODE="0600", SYMLINK="lin_tape/IBMchanger138A" KERNEL=="IBMtape*[0-9]", SYSFS{ww_port_name}=="0x5005076300549127", OWNER="tsminst1", MODE="0600", SYMLINK="lin_tape/IBMtape137" KERNEL=="IBMtape*[0-9]", SYSFS{ww_port_name}=="0x5005076300549128", OWNER="tsminst1", MODE="0600", SYMLINK="lin_tape/IBMtape138" KERNEL=="IBMtape*[0-9]", SYSFS{ww_port_name}=="0x5005076300549129", OWNER="tsminst1", MODE="0600", SYMLINK="lin_tape/IBMtape139" KERNEL=="IBMtape*n", OWNER="tsminst1", MODE="0600" There are a lot of gotchas with this method that I'm running into. I'm not sure if they are kernel bugs or driver issues but not much of this is documented anywhere. Bullet-list (so far): - If you have alternate pathing or data path failover, lin_taped needs be installed and running. Problem is getting persistent binding to work with this. There's a race condition where once modprobe lin_tape is run, the udev files are created with the rules. But the SYSFS{primary_path} key isn't defined correctly until lin_taped is run, BUT lin_taped can't run until lin_tape is loaded. So by the time lin_taped is executed and running, the lin_tape rules have already been processed for udev. o My workaround will be to create an init script that will run lin_taped and then udevtrigger. Seems to work, but udevtrigger once crashed the system. - Sometimes when lin_tape is loaded, the mode is incorrect for devices. The fix is again "udevtrigger". - KERNEL=="IBMtape*" doesn't work for renaming, because sometimes a symlink to IBMtape1n is used instead of IBMtape1. Which is why I have the character class "IBMtape*[0-9]" Here's the output for ls /dev/ commands for when I believe things are configured correctly. Caveat: I haven't even tested reading/writing to these devices yet, let alone defining the devices to TSM. #ls -l /dev/IBMtape* crw-r--r-- 1 root root 250, 3071 Sep 27 11:43 /dev/IBMtape crw------- 1 tsminst1 root 250, 0 Sep 27 11:43 /dev/IBMtape0 crw------- 1 tsminst1 root 250, 1024 Sep 27 11:43 /dev/IBMtape0n crw------- 1 tsminst1 root 250, 1 Sep 27 11:43 /dev/IBMtape1 crw------- 1 tsminst1 root 250, 1025 Sep 27 11:43 /dev/IBMtape1n crw------- 1 tsminst1 root 250, 2 Sep 27 11:43 /dev/IBMtape2 crw------- 1 tsminst1 root 250, 1026 Sep 27 11:43 /dev/IBMtape2n #ls -l /dev/lin_tape total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Sep 27 11:43 IBMchanger137B -> ../IBMchanger0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Sep 27 11:43 IBMchanger138A -> ../IBMchanger1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Sep 27 11:43 IBMtape137 -> ../IBMtape2 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Sep 27 11:43 IBMtape138 -> ../IBMtape0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Sep 27 11:43 IBMtape139 -> ../IBMtape1 HTH, Sergio -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ads...@vm.marist.edu] On Behalf Of Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 2:53 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: [ADSM-L] Looking for SAN/tape experts assistance I have mentioned in previous posts that we are putting up 2-new RH Linux based TSM server . These are the first of my existing 5-Linux servers to use EMC SAN storage. With every new adventure, we get new problems. This one is driving everyone crazy and hope someone out there can point us in the right direction. We have seen posts in ADSM-L that sorta talk about it, but nothing that explains what is going on with us or how to resolve it. Both new servers have been configured identically when it comes to the OS (RedHat Linux 5.5 kernel 2.6.18-194.11.3.el5) software and other hardware supporting software (EMC Powerpath and IBM lin_tape drivers - 1.41.1 for the TS1120/1130 drives) The problem is this. Every time we reboot one of the new servers, the values in /proc/scsi/IBMtape is different in the assignment of /dev numbers to the drives. It seems to find the tape drives in a different order each time. None of my 5-production nor the other new TSM server have this problem (I have rebooted the 2nd new server 4-times and the /dev/IBMtape? values stay the same). When looking through the "fixlist" for lin_tape (usually engineering-speak), we saw this interesting entry at the 1.37 level: Removed persistent naming script in favor of new method Questions come to mind about things like "what naming script"......."what new method" .... "could this possibly be related to what we are experiencing"? We have spent all day trying to figure this wrinkle out. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Zoltan Forray TSM Software & Hardware Administrator Virginia Commonwealth University UCC/Office of Technology Services zfor...@vcu.edu - 804-828-4807 Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable organizations will never use email to request that you reply with your password, social security number or confidential personal information. For more details visit http://infosecurity.vcu.edu/phishing.html