On Friday 18 November 2005 10:04, richard wrote: > Kern Sibbald wrote: > > On Thursday 17 November 2005 21:00, richard wrote: > >> Hi List, > >> > >> There have been a number of postings over the last few years mentioning > >> Seagate STT20000A IDE tape drives - has anyone managaed to get one to > >> work with Bacula? > >> > >> FWIW - Suse 9.3 on Athlon 2600XP, Bacula 1.38.1 (and earlier versions) > > <snipped> > > >> running as ordinary user & with /dev/nst0 perms set to 777 > >> > >> mt-tools test runs but the "tar tvf" stage retuns nothing - tape whirrs > >> for a few seconds then prompt re-appears. > > <snipped> > > >> Any thoughts gratefully recieved! > > > > I've seen this kind of problem previously with other IDE tape drives. The > > problem generally is that the kernel driver was written by a IDE > > programmer who normally programs disk drives, and those guys don't > > normally understand the nuances (and there are many) of tape drives. > > > > That said, it *is* probably possible to make the drive work by setting > > the appropriate Bacula Device directives. This is not easy! It takes a > > lot of intimate knowledge of each directive and what it does, and a *lot* > > of testing time and effort. In some cases, if the kernel driver is > > *really* broken, it will be necessary to get it fixed -- this happened in > > the case of several drivers. Fortunately, in those cases, the kernel guys > > were very > > cooperative ... > > > > By the way, if you are getting an Invalid argument on a write() as you > > did, it is most likely because the driver cannot handle the blocksize > > that you have specified -- probably too big. Some IDE tape drives > > require fixed size blocks, but cannot accept just any one. You might try > > the size 32768. In fact, I would recommend to start with the OnStream > > tape Device conf that is in the default bacula-sd.conf file -- it is also > > an IDE tape drive ... > > Thanks Kern, I'll give that a try as soon as I can (probably over the > weekend). > > BTW: Did you spot in the middle of my post (above): "tar tvf" stage > returns nothing? Is this normal - I'm not familiar with tar used for > tapes, but options tvf should list the tar to console? I saw the local > directory going out to the tape in the previous step and expected > something similar.
That doesn't surprise me too much, but it is a very bad sign. If tar does not work, it will be even more difficult to make Bacula work. Yes, tar tvf should list the contents of the tape, provided of course that the rest of the tar command is correct and that you have rewound the tape. > > I appreciate that this points to a problem outside bacula but any help > from this list would be much appreciated. I didn't mean to point the finger outside Bacula -- first one needs to understand the minute little details of how the drive works, then one must see if they are consistent with proper tape drive usage. If they are, then most likely Bacula can be adapted with the appropriate directives. However, as I pointed out, given the nature of the drive and past experiences, I have certain doubts ... You will undoubtedly need to upgrade to at least 1.36.3 as a lot of work was done on the Bacula Device interface to make it more flexible ... ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the JBoss Inc. Get Certified Today Register for a JBoss Training Course. Free Certification Exam for All Training Attendees Through End of 2005. For more info visit: http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7628&alloc_id=16845&op=click _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
