Thanks to all who responded. A good number of you responded that I should
clean the tape with a tape cleaner which I already know. Maybe because
my question was not clear enough. Anyway, here are some responses that
might be interesting to know.
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>From lausser@KOTW0002.mch.sni.de Wed Feb 1 03:46:21 1995
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 95 12:45:25 +0100
From: lausser@KOTW0002.mch.sni.de (Gerhard Lausser)
To: Jose.Montilla@gain.com
Subject: Re: SCSI messages on SOlaris 2.X
hi jose,
>
this comes from your tape drive (is it an exabyte?)
you have to clean it with a cleaning tape. the drive knows about when this
procedure was applied last time and warns you if this happened too long
in the past
--gerhard
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>From pluta@mcae.mke.ab.com Wed Feb 1 05:53:13 1995
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 07:45:56 -0600
From: pluta@mcae.mke.ab.com (Rick Pluta)
To: Jose.Montilla@gain.com
Subject: Re: SCSI messages on SOlaris 2.X
Cc: pluta@mcae.mke.ab.com
Jose,
I am assuming your st4 is an Exabyte tape drive. If not, the following may
not apply:
Bit 3 of byte 21 (called CLN) in the request sense data block returned by
the Exabyte tape drive specifies whether or not the drive needs cleaning.
If the bit is set, the drive requires cleaning.
Since I don't have the SunOS st driver source, I cannot say for sure if
it in fact uses this bit to trigger the periodic head cleaning message,
but I'm pretty sure it does.
Rick Pluta
Systems Analyst, CAE/CAD Services Voice: (414)382-3799
Allen-Bradley Co. Fax: (414)382-4444
Milwaukee, Wi. USA Email: pluta@eda.mke.ab.com
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>From brunel@itersd1.iterus.org Wed Feb 1 08:08:55 1995
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 08:10:31 -0800
From: brunel@itersd1.iterus.org (Louis Brune)
To: Jose.Montilla@gain.com
Subject: Re: SCSI messages on SOlaris 2.X
Assuming you have an Exabyte 8505 (8 mm tape drive) somewhere on the
system, it's asking for a cleaning tape. Lots of lights blinking on
the drive?
I'm told by someone whom I believe that this is triggered by a timer
on the 8505, not an error rate.
My personal experience is that some brands of cleaning tapes will fail
to reset this timer. Not surprisingly, the ones from Exabyte work fine.
-- Louis M. Brune 1 619 622 5119 SAIC - International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor Co-Center louis@iterus.org----- End Included Message -----
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>From worsham@aer.com Wed Feb 1 08:32:10 1995 From: worsham@aer.com (Robert D. Worsham) Subject: Re: SCSI messages on SOlaris 2.X To: Jose.Montilla@gain.com Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 11:32:06 -0500 (EST) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Jose, > > Does anyone know what triggers these (What is the mechanism?) messages on Solaris ? > > Jan 29 05:52:40 eureka unix: Periodic head cleaning required > Jan 29 05:53:42 eureka unix: WARNING: /iommu@0,10000000/sbus@0,10001000/espdma@5,840000/esp@5,8800000/st@4,0 (st4): > When we see these messages they're occuring because our Exabyte 8mm tape drive needs to be cleaned. When the tape unit senses that the heads require cleaning, it sends a signal to the host which manifests itself as the messages you've placed above. To rememdy the problem, we insert a cleaning tape...
hope this helps,
-- Bob
____________________________________________________________ ____ ____ ____ / \ | / \ |/ \ Atmospheric & Environmental / \| /______\ | Research, Inc. \ /| \ | 840 Memorial Drive \____/ | \____/ | Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
Robert D. Worsham (Bob) voice: (617) 547-6207 email: worsham@aer.com fax: (617) 661-6479 ____________________________________________________________
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>From wolfgang@sunspot.nosc.mil Wed Feb 1 08:40:40 1995 Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 08:38:49 -0800 From: wolfgang@sunspot.nosc.mil (Lewis E. Wolfgang) To: Jose.Montilla@gain.com Subject: Re: SCSI messages on SOlaris 2.X
Those messages look like they are coming from an Exabyte 8505 8mm tape transport. The transport itself determines when it needs cleaning, but under 4.1.3 the information was not passed back to the os. I guess the driver in Solaris is a bit smarter.
Regards, Lew Wolfgang
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>From G.Eustace@massey.ac.nz Wed Feb 1 11:27:20 1995 To: Jose.Montilla@gain.com Subject: Re: SCSI messages on SOlaris 2.X Date: Thu, 2 Feb 1995 08:22:09 +1300 From: Glen Eustace <G.Eustace@massey.ac.nz>
Exabyte tape drives, of more recent times, have a built in timer that causes this message after about 30 hours of read/write activity on the drive.
Once the drive has been cleaned, the message stops.
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