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mt-st Version and LTO-2 Densities

Hi all,

My Quantum Ultrium LTO-2 drive is giving me hell!! :eek: :cry: This is the second drive I've had, the first was replaced by Quantum under warranty, but this one isn't much better.

My basic 3 questions are:
1) What is the current version of mt-st? I have 0.8
2) What density code and block size whould I be using with LTO-2? At the moment I'm using block size 512 and density 0x42 "No Translation"
3) Does anyone have any other suggestions to put me out of my misery?

This is a single drive connected to a HP ProLiant ML370 via SCSI running RedHat Linux ES4 Nahant Update 4. The specific errors are:

Code:

st0: Error with sense data: Current st0: sense key Medium Error

Additional sense: Write append error

st0: Error on write filemark.

This happens doing a simple command like:

Code:

tar cvf /dev/st0 /root/

System details:

Code:

[root@taranaki ~]# uname -a

Linux taranaki.weatherbeeta.co.nz 2.6.9-42.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jul 12 23:27:17 EDT 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[root@taranaki ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release

Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 4)

[root@taranaki ~]# cat /proc/scsi/scsi

Attached devices:

Host: scsi2 Channel: 00 Id: 05 Lun: 00

  Vendor: CERTANCE Model: ULTRIUM 2        Rev: 1783

  Type:  Sequential-Access                ANSI SCSI revision: 03

[root@taranaki ~]# mt status

SCSI 2 tape drive:

File number=0, block number=-1, partition=0.

Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x42 (no translation).

Soft error count since last status=0

General status bits on (1010000):

 ONLINE IM_REP_EN

[root@taranaki ~]#

Of course, as soon as I ask for help I manage to solve it myself... Typical!!

The tape block size appears to be need to be set to 0 on these drives (Quantum ("Certance") Ultrium LTO-2) for them to work properly, and don't use software compression ('z' or 'j' etc option in tar)

Hope this helps someone else at least...

I lied... It worked once, and only once... After that it fails with one of the following errors:

Code:

st0: Error with sense data: Current st0: sense key Medium Error

Additional sense: Track following error

st0: Error with sense data: Current st0: sense key Medium Error

Additional sense: Write append error

st0: Error on write filemark.

Code:

st0: Error with sense data: Current st0: sense key Medium Error

Additional sense: Write append error

st0: Error with sense data: Current st0: sense key Medium Error

Additional sense: Write append error

st0: Error on write filemark.