Re: nst0 attached to a raid card gives lots of errors

Geoffrey Scott wrote:
> Hello to everyone on this list,
> 
> 	I have a tape drive that is exhibiting very strange behaviour.  It
> will work fine once and then throw i/o errors and stop the backup from
> working.  When the st driver is loaded I get these messages in the logs:
> 
> Aug 28 04:04:10 pronto kernel: Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi5, channel 4,
> id 3, lun 0
> Aug 28 04:04:10 pronto kernel: st0: Block limits 1 - 16777215 bytes.
> 
> Aug 30 04:03:22 pronto kernel: Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi5, channel 4,
> id 3, lun 0
> Aug 30 04:03:27 pronto kernel: st0: Block limits 1 - 16777215 bytes.
> Aug 30 04:07:21 pronto kernel: st0: Error 250400f1 (sugg. bt 0x20, driver bt
> 0x5, host bt 0x4).
> Aug 30 04:07:21 pronto kernel: st0: Error on write filemark.
> Aug 30 04:09:27 pronto kernel: st0: Error 250400f1 (sugg. bt 0x20, driver bt
> 0x5, host bt 0x4).
> Aug 30 04:10:33 pronto kernel: st0: Error 250400f1 (sugg. bt 0x20, driver bt
> 0x5, host bt 0x4).
> Aug 30 04:10:33 pronto kernel: st0: Error on write filemark.
> 
> As you can see sometimes it loads fine and other it does not.
> 
> I am left wondering if attaching a tape drive to an old raid card (it
> reports itself as megaraid) was a good idea and if any hardware minded
> people on this list would know if it would be better just using a standard
> scsi controller from either 3ware or Adaptec?
> 
> The other strange things I see are if I do mt -f /dev/nst0 status and a tape
> is in the drive, it will report the status.  If I do that and no tape is in
> the drive it will sit there until a tape is inserted and after 2 tries at
> running the command with I/O errors, it will again report the status
> correctly and continue to do so as long as there is a tape in the drive.
> 
> These problems mean that sometimes my backup works other times it doesn't.
> 
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Cheers Geoff

Make sure the scsi terminator(s) are attached and working.