[SOLVED] Cant "see" Fibre Channel Tape Drive

sirole · 06-24-2018, 01:20 PM

Hi All,

I have a IBM 3592 E05 (TS1120) tape drive i want to connect to my computer.

The tape drive is connected directly to my computer with fibre channel LC-LC cable.

My OS is centos7
kernel: 3.10.0-862.el7.x86_64

I believe it should show up when i type lsscsi, but does not:

Code:

[ole@localhost tape]$ lsscsi
[1:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      ST1000DM010-2EP1 CC43  /dev/sda 
[8:0:0:0]    disk    General  USB Flash Disk   1.00  /dev/sdb

The fibre channel HBA card in my computer is:
[ole@localhost tape]$ lspci | grep Fibre

Code:

03:00.0 Fibre Channel: QLogic Corp. ISP2532-based 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA (rev 02)
03:00.1 Fibre Channel: QLogic Corp. ISP2532-based 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA (rev 02)

The qla2xxx kernel module is loaded:

Code:

[ole@localhost tape]$ lsmod | grep qla
qla2xxx               729354  0 
scsi_transport_fc      64007  1 qla2xxx

The fibre channel connections appear as "cable is unplugged..." in dmesg:

Code:

[  513.188504] scsi host10: qla2xxx
[  513.190795] qla2xxx [0000:03:00.0]-00fb:10: QLogic HPAJ764A - HP 8Gb Dual Channel PCI-e 2.0 FC HBA.
[  513.190821] qla2xxx [0000:03:00.0]-00fc:10: ISP2532: PCIe (5.0GT/s x8) @ 0000:03:00.0 hdma+ host#=10 fw=8.07.00 (90d5).
[  534.271499] qla2xxx [0000:03:00.0]-8038:10: Cable is unplugged...

Tried to manualy load "st" kernel module and install IBM tape driver "lin_tape". But the issue is that i cant even detect the drive, operation comes later.

Is my fibre topology set-up faulty?
my drive is configured as a L-Node and the HBA is set to "prefere Loop, point-to-point othervise"
speed is set to "auto" at drive and HBA..

I have shined a laser through the fibre cable, ligth is passing through..

Please help, what is wrong here?

MensaWater · 06-25-2018, 09:43 AM

Do you have sg3_utils installed? If not, run "yum install sg3_utils".

Does your lsscsi output change after you run "/usr/bin/rescan-scsi-bus.sh" to rescan?

Failing all that you might want to install the Qlogic Super Installer from Qlogic's site and run the qaucli to see what it thinks is going on with your Qlogic connections.

If you have anything else on this Qlogic the rescan will cause a LIP/reset on them. For disk arrays you typically want to have at least 2 fiber cards or ports in the server so that only one path gets reset at a time. For tape drives they're typically single path anyway so it is less of a concern.

sirole · 07-09-2018, 02:58 PM

Thanks for the reply.

I found the solution.
It turned out to be a faulty cable running between the tape drive and the control panel. The control panel was needed to set the drive configuration (rack mounted (direct connection to my computer) instead of library mounted), and the fibre channel topology. (L->N Negotiate). I replaced the cable, and was now able to access the settings menus I was unable to access before.

These drives are part of "enterprise" systems and informations outside IBM or professional channels are hard to come by. If someone else needs more information in the future, I'm happy to share my experience.

Big thanks to Eurotech for troubleshooting and selling me a replacement cable.

Marking as solved,
O