Hi, everybody.
And thanks as usual to all the responders, acknowledged below
(my original message is after the acknowledgements)
Among the on-target replies, Chris_Marble@hmc.edu pointed me to
http://www3.hmc.edu/docs/coolstuff/tapes which contains some useful
suggestions - including an especially nifty trick on how to make changes to
st.conf without rebooting in between.
Dan Pritts <danno@ans.net> pointed me to a st.conf entry - previously posted
by him - that I ended up using.
This is what I did:
i) I used scsiinfo -p to find out how the tape drive identifies itself:
esp0: st5,0 tgt 5 lun 0:
Synchronous(6.667MB/sec) Clean CanReconnect
Removable Tape: ARCHIVE Python 28388-XXX 5.45
ii) I created new entries in st.conf as follows:
"ARCHIVE Python 28388-XXX 5.45","Archive Python 4mm DAT","ARCH_PythonStacker",
"ARCHIVE Python 28388-XXX5.45","Archive Python 4mmDAT","ARCH_PythonStacker",
"ARCHIVE Python 28388-XXX","Archive Python 4mm DAT","ARCH_PythonStacker",
"ARCHIVE Python 28388", "Archive Python 4mm DAT","ARCH_PythonStacker"
[...]
;
ARCH_PythonStacker = 1,0x34,0,0xde39,4,0x00,0x13,0x24,0x24,3;
The (totally arcane to me) ARCH_PythonStacker entry is a result of Dan Pritts'
high wizardry.
Just adding the first four lines (pointing to the standard ARCH_Python) does
not have any visible effect.
iii) As a result of the above, the 0m device has now become responsive -
though mt now does not identify the dryve as anything more than a DAT drive and
gives a (ominous?) 'no additional sense' in status:
$ mt -f /dev/rmt/0ln status DAT tape drive:
sense key(0x6)= Unit Attention residual= 0 retries= 0
file no= 0 block no= 0
$ mt -f /dev/rmt/0mn status
DAT tape drive:
sense key(0x0)= No Additional Sense residual= 0 retries= 0
file no= 0 block no= 0
I am now trying to use the 0m device, on the off chance that it can give me
better capacity or speed (it does appear to be quicker than 0l, but I haven't
done any real tests, yet)
Some people pointed out (correctly, I think), that Python drives not OEM'd by
Sun have a different microcode and therefore do not support the full roster of
devices.
Another suggestion was to contact the manufacturer (Conner, now part
of Seagate). Their web site is singularly bereft of
non-microsloth info. On other occasions, I found their hotline is of limited
help on Unix specific issues. Oh, brave NT world.
Others suggested removing all the /dev/rmt files, follwed by a driveconfig,
tapes and/or boot -r. All this I tried, to no avail.
Other people advised that the drive has hardware compression, so nothing is
gained by messing with it. This may well be, but I have made no tests to verify
it.
Given the low coefficient of my understanding of
what I did - or, better, of its results - further advice is welcome.
Thanks go, in no particular order, to (sorry if I left anybody out):
Dan Pritts <danno@ans.net>
Shubin Wang <shubin@brain2.nida.nih.gov>
Chris_Marble@hmc.edu
john benjamins <johnb@Soliton.COM>
"William L. Hamlin" <whamlin@connetsys.com>
"Cranston, Andy" <Andy.Cranston@thomson-directories.co.uk>
Amjad Zamel <AmjadZ@ms.sts.com.jo>
plw@ncgr.org (Peter L. Wargo)
"Auteria Wally Winzer Jr." <wally.winzer@ChampUSA.COM>
------- Original Message Follows -------
From: "Alessandro Forghieri" <alf@orion.it>
Organization: Nouvelle S.r.l
To: sun-managers@ra.mcs.anl.gov
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 09:39:25 +0000
Subject: DAT - Python question
Reply-to: alf@orion.it
Priority: normal
Hi, everybody.
I have a Sparc5 with a DAT drive attached, that reports to me thusly:
Archive Python 4mm Helical Scan tape drive:
sense key(0x6)= Unit Attention residual= 0 retries= 0
file no= 0 block no= 0
sysinfo reports it as:
rmt/0 (st5) is a SCSI tape drive
(wow!)
Problem: the only device that operates the drive is /dev/rmt/0l[n].
All others give me:
/dev/rmt/0: no tape loaded or drive offline
I did boot -r & resort to other enchantments, but no joy.
Can anybody help? I will summarize.
This is the relevant uname:
SunOS alpha 5.5 Generic sun4m sparc SUNW,SPARCstation-5
Cheers,
Alessandro Forghieri
---- Alessandro Forghieri Sitemaster-Nouvelle srl voice: +39-59-345767 Via Giardini 460 http://www.orion.it/~alf 41100 Modena ITALY "We're all mad around here.I'm mad.You're mad. "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. "You must be" said the cat, "or you would'nt have come here"---- Alessandro Forghieri Sitemaster-Nouvelle srl voice: +39-59-345767 Via Giardini 460 http://www.orion.it/~alf 41100 Modena ITALY "We're all mad around here.I'm mad.You're mad. "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. "You must be" said the cat, "or you would'nt have come here"
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