Hello, On 6/29/2006 6:59 PM, Timo Neuvonen wrote: > A couple of days ago I was writing about tape labeling problems. > At that time it looked to me, that the problem was related to using my new > autochanger. Now, after some more debugging, I think the problem exists also > with a single drive, but the key factor is that the tape must be totally > empty (eg. brand new). As a workaround, writing an eof to the beginning of > the tape fixes the problem.
That can always work, because it enables the tape drive to much faster recognize the tape format. I'm not sure that this is documented, though. > > Originally, I was trying to label brand new tapes in autochanger: > > *label barcodes > <clip> > 3912 Failed to label Volume: ERR=dev.c:678 Rewind error on "VXA320" > (/dev/nst0). ERR=Input/output error. > This took about 5 minutes per tape, most of the time the drive just keeps > displaying "ready". No tape access during the last 4 minutes... Hmhm... have you checked if mtx-changer uses the function that checks that the drive is ready? > If I do the following (for each tape) > # mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind > # mt -f /dev/nst0 weof > > and then run "label barcodes" again, labeling works without any errors, with > one tape it takes about 1 minute (~30 s to load a tape etc). So, this takes > much less than the timeout of 5 minutes above. I know that behaviour from DLT hardware: With an unformated tape, the initial tape recognition can take very long. Your tape drive, I assume, doesn't check the tape format on loading but only at the first read access. In that case, you're lucky, because you have a very good way to prepare tapes faster... of course, without having a quick way to ensure that tape is really empty (in case you didn't unwrap it just before). > I tried to check the documentation, if it says that the tape should start > with an eof before labeling, but I couldn't find any note like that. Of > course, if there are no other hidden problems in labeling, the easiest way > would be to change documentation to require the eof. Well, it's not required, but it avoids at least one misleading warning message. Any problems, I think, beyond that should be handled between mtx-changer and the hardware. > > Finally, I re-installed my old Exabyte VXA-2 drive, that I'd been using for > a couple of years: > > *label > <clip> > block.c:944 Read error at file:blk 0:0 on device "VXA2" (/dev/nst0). > ERR=Input/output error. > 3000 OK label. Volume=Testxx Device="VXA2" (/dev/nst0) > Catalog record for Volume "Testxx", Slot 0 successfully created. > Requesting to mount VXA2 ... > 3001 Device "VXA2" (/dev/nst0) is mounted with Volume "Testxx" > * > > So, it looks now that a similar problem appears with the old drive too, but > now the tape gets labeled anyway. No problem, but just the above mentioned misleading warning message. > It's been at least half a year since I've > used it to label new tapes either, so could it be possible that the newest > Bacula releases expect more what they should find from the tape before > labeling it? Not as far as I know. > Both of the drives above were now attached to 1.38.10-3, on FC4 > (same system, just a conf change). It may have been as old as 1.36.3 that > I've been using last time, when labeling ran ok, with no errors at all (as > far as I can remember). > > Yes, this may be something Exabyte-spesific problem, but at least I think > labeling used to work with the same hardware some time ago. > > Ps. > I've also tried labeling with 1 tape at a time in the autochanger, using > "label" instead of "label barcodes". It then works in the similar way like > in the single drive: error message, but tape gets labeled anyway. Well, one more reason to suspect you should tweak your mtx-changer program to ensure the tape drive has finished loading the tape before it returns. Arno > > Regards, > Timo > > > > Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? > Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier > Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 > _______________________________________________ > Bacula-users mailing list > Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users > -- IT-Service Lehmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] Arno Lehmann http://www.its-lehmann.de Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
