I'm no expert on tape drives either, but I was sure that "losing a SCSI device" is a bad thing for SCSI -- think of it as an IDE drive. you don't just go pulling power or data from a running, booted computer.
All the devices in a computer are on, stays on, until the system shuts down. The PTY/SCSI subject of your email should be unrelated, but a abruptly missing device is never a positive outcome for an OS. Think about the old "removing a mounted USB drive = panic" issue we've dealt with for years. I am questioning your reasoning behind turning off a tape drive on a live system. I would never recommend that. On 7/19/09, mahle...@yahoo.com <mahle...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > After installing a tape drive and SCSI card in my home system, I got some > strange behavior that I think isn't directly related, but would like to get > an expert opinion about. > > mobius# uname -a > FreeBSD mobius 7.1-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 7.1-PRERELEASE #0: Fri Sep 5 02:34:20 > CDT 2008 r...@mobius:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386 > > On July 7, I turned off the system, installed the SCSI card, connected the > drive and turned it all back on. This all got correctly detected as (select > lines from /var/log/messages): > > Jul 7 03:10:40 mobius kernel: asr0: <Adaptec Caching SCSI RAID> mem > 0xf4000000-0xf5ffffff irq 17 at device 12.1 on pci2 > Jul 7 03:10:40 mobius kernel: asr0: [GIANT-LOCKED] > Jul 7 03:10:40 mobius kernel: asr0: [ITHREAD] > Jul 7 03:10:40 mobius kernel: asr0: ADAPTEC 2100S FW Rev. 370F, 1 > channel, 256 CCBs, Protocol I2O > Jul 7 03:10:40 mobius kernel: sa0 at asr0 bus 0 target 11 lun 0 > Jul 7 03:10:40 mobius kernel: sa0: <EXABYTE VXA-172 3206> Removable > Sequential Access SCSI-3 device > > I stuck in a tape, did a level 0 dump of /home and tested a restore, both of > which worked perfectly. > > Only July 8, I ejected the tape via the button on the front, and then turned > off the tape drive so the visiting relatives wouldn't complain about the fan > noise (more from /var/log/messages): > Jul 8 02:27:01 mobius kernel: (sa0:asr0:0:11:0): lost device > > That next week, I tried to SSH to this box from work to do some minor random > thing or another, and I got this sort of error message: > Jul 14 15:27:16 mobius sshd[64290]: error: openpty: Invalid argument > Jul 14 15:27:16 mobius sshd[64293]: error: session_pty_req: session 0 alloc > failed > > I believe I had SSHed to it at least twice over the preceding week, on July > 10 and early in the day on July 14. > > As the system was running perfectly in all other ways (well, at least the > wife hadn't complained her network files were offline, which is the only > important thing!), it took a few days before I finally got around to logging > in at the console and rebooting it after which it has seemed to be fine. > The system has been eminently stable other than this one issue one time. > > I have not been able to find much from Google about this other than the > following two items- > > A) very specific bugs against different SSH versions than I am using. Doubt > this is the problem. > > B) some issues some folks have had with needing to create /dev/pty or > similar items. While it seems far fetched, this is the first time the > system was up with a new device and ... I don't know. New device in the > system and an old device goes wonky within a week seems to be a bit of a > coincidence. > > ** Does anyone have any thoughts if these are related or not? ** > > Also, any tips, tricks or sites with working with tape drives on FreeBSD > would be appreciated! (The handbook is a bit sparse on this point and I'm > used to autoloaders and better under Windows/Backup Exec). I'm learning my > way around camcontrol and mt, but should only need such things in certain > circumstances, like to get the tape drive "back" after turning it off for a > while, right? > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org" > _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
