Thanks, Bill.
Just to clarify, 9.6 is the RHEL version, not the Bacula version. I'm
building using Bacula 15.0.3.
Lloyd
On 10/5/26 16:25, Bill Arlofski via Bacula-users wrote:
On 10/5/26 3:18 PM, Lloyd Brown via Bacula-users wrote:
Hey, all.
I've run Bacula off and on for several years, including v5 and v9, both
using disk for the backup media. I'm setting up my first instance using
tape, and Bacula 15. I keep intermittently running into I/O errors on
the tape, which seems to cause Bacula to declare the tape as "Full",
even if it's only used 10s of MB of a 30TB tape. Are there any general
recommendations for setup that I might have missed? Some kind of retry
mechanism? Some kind of tuning? I've already replaced SAS cables, and
it doesn't seem to make any real difference.
In this case, I'm running one RHEL 9.6 host, attached via SAS to 2
LTO-10 drives, in a Spectra Stack tape library. Using the stock Linux
tape drivers, not the IBM ITDT specialty driver. The other tenant in
the library (Versity) has not had issues even remotely resembling these.
I'm attaching an excerpt from the bacula log when the I/O errors
occurred. I'm still trying to find system logs from around the same
time. Any recommendations or pointers welcome.
Thanks,
Hello Lloyd
I have been working in Quantum's lab near Denver (remotely) to certify
Bacula Enterprise with their LTO9 and LTO10 drives in their tape
libraries.
I was experiencing these same I/O errors and it turned out the tape
drives were faulty. Once they were replaced, these issues went away.
It could also be faulty tapes in your case, but in my case it was the
drives. It could also be that the drive(s) need cleaning.
Regarding "the other tenant (Versity)" not having these issues, I am
guessing that these two systems share the robot arm, but not the
drives, so if the drives zoned to Bacula were zoned to Versity I am
sure you would see the same issues reported by that software.
Tape drive I/O errors reported by Bacula are exactly that - tape drive
I/O errors - and not a Bacula issue. It is is Bacula reporting what
the drive is telling the SD.
Also, it will not solve your problem, but you might want to consider
upgrading your Bacula installation since version 9.6 is quite old.
Version 17.0.0(beta) is the latest Community version available.
P.S. On a somewhat related note, you might be interested in my
mtx-changer drop-in replacement script, and my tape-alert drop-in
replacement script. Both do much better logging and have additional
features (like automatic drive cleaning, and email reporting of tape
alert issues) which make them quite useful in a Bacula (Community or
Enterprise) environment. Plus it would benefit my open-source software
to get some more real-world experience/feedback. :)
Check out mtx-changer-python, bacula-tapealert, and baculabackupreport
@ my Github account here: https://github.com/waa
I'd love to hear some feedback if you decide to give them a try!
Hope this helps,
Bill
--
Bill Arlofski
[email protected]
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Lloyd Brown
HPC Systems Administrator
Office of Research Computing
Brigham Young University
http://rc.byu.edu
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