Either Bacula is in charge of the changer or it is not. -- Dan Langille - BSDCan / PGCon d...@langille.org
> On Feb 7, 2018, at 12:48 PM, Kenneth Garges <gar...@ucsc.edu> wrote: > > That might be the issue. Somebody does something in the web interface that > takes the changer offline, clicks OK at the warning message. Then later when > it’s back online FreeBSD doesn’t figure that out and needs a reboot. > > Probably an issue that should be addressed with FreeBSD rather than Bacula. > > > > >> On 6Feb 2018, at 6:50 PM, Alan Brown <a.br...@ucl.ac.uk> wrote: >> >> On 07/02/18 02:01, Kenneth Garges wrote: >>> Permissions and ownership are ok. I think I figured out the problem. >>> >>> Both mtx and chio would work for a while, then stop working returning only >>> “Inappropriate ioctl for device” or other errors. The culprit I think is a >>> library management tool by Quantum. The library provides a web interface >>> that allows you to check status, move tapes around, and various utilities. >>> >>> Problem is if you use that web interface it gets the server (both Bacula SD >>> and Director on the same FreeBSD box) wedged such that mtx and chio always >>> fail. >> >> Yes - and if it's about to do anything which takes the changer offline >> the web ui gives a warning message and asked if you want to continue. >> >>> Unknown to me, the operations staff had been using that web interface while >>> I was testing. After I asked them to stop my system seems to work reliably. >> >> I hope you changed the password and put the changer in its own IP subnet >> after that. >> >> I wrote some kludgy shell scripts (originally for Neo4000, then Neo 8000 >> and now Quantum i500 - portable as far as I know) which automate loading >> and unloading of the changer (imported tapes are scattered randomly >> around available slots to ensure even wear and tear) - these mean that >> all operations staff have to do is open the magazine to load/unload >> tapes when emailed to do so by Bacula. >> >> Dan can probably improve them considerably. >> >> As an adjunct to that another script works out which tapes are oldest >> (if in the scratch pool) or about to expire (if none are in the scratch >> pool) and asks staff to pull them out of the safe. >> >> I also submitted some chages to the mtx-changer script a while ago which >> check that the changer's actually ready before attempting to send it >> commands. Kern's been sitting on them for a couple of years. >> >> >> There are some pretty whizzy things you can do to monitor tape health >> when a tape is in the changer using the sg_attr and sg_logs commands >> that go _far _ beyond Tapealart or smartmontools capabilities. >> >> I've submitted a number of updates to sg_utils and am in the process of >> (slowly) reverse engineering what I can from the MAMs that's not well >> documented using text output provided by veritape (proprietary, windows >> tool from mptapes.com which reads MAMs). >> >> Selfish motivation is (of course) to reduce the amount of time I have to >> spend manually scanning tapes with the windows program/standalone >> scanner then interpreting output. All of that information is available >> when the tape is in the drive and with appropriate MAM reads at >> load/unload it's possible to have the bacula server tell me when a tape >> is approaching end of life (this is far more accurate than the metrics >> bacula uses of simple load cycles.) - and more importantly, when tape >> drives are going bad. >> >> Having spent several man-years dealing with the fallout of bad LTO tapes >> damaging drives and then those drives damaging tapes, I want to minimize >> the pain if it ever happens again. >> >> (LTO drives even return detailed information about the condition of each >> of the heads if queried the right way. This data is interpreted by IBM >> or HP's proprietary tools to give reports but they use the same queries >> as sg_logs does to get it) >> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
