Onstream IDE Tape Drive

jwatco2001 · 06-29-2003, 10:45 PM

I have been pulling my hair out trying to get an IDE Tape drive to work under RH 9.0, I am new to linux backups. I have been searching the forum and have not been able to fix my problem. Here is what's going on. The tape drive is an OnStream IDE Drive. It is detected durring startup and assigned /dev/hdc, now how do i access this drive for doing tar's, rewinds, erase... etc.
I have tried everything.
Thanks.

jailbait · 06-29-2003, 11:12 PM

I am a little unsure on the subject, but:

I used to have similar problems with floppy tape support on SuSE. I had to add several lines in /etc/modules.conf to activate tape support.

IDE tape support would be enough different that my changes to /etc/modules.conf would not help you. I suggest that you use Google to find how somebody changed /etc/modules.conf to make IDE tapes work on Red Hat.

http://www.aplawrence.com/Bofcusm/2043.html

http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.3/2...tation/ide.txt
says that /etc/modules.conf should reference the IDE tape as
char-major-37

jwatco2001 · 06-30-2003, 04:16 PM

ok, here is where i am at.

If i do a 'dmesg | grep hdc' i find that hdc <--> ht0, so now if i try 'mt -f /dev/ht0 status I get 'Device or resource busy'. Now if I do a 'dmesg | grep ht0' i get:

ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 1a, key = 2, asc = 3a, ascq = 0
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 0, key = 2, asc = 3a, ascq = 0
ide-tape: ht0: drive not ready

Now the drive has power and there is a tape in the drive. I have tried it with numerous tapes.

Any ideas why this is happening?

michaelk · 06-30-2003, 06:01 PM

IMHO
I would think the tape drive would work better if you setup SCSI emulation. If you already have a CD writer just add another line to your bootloader i.e. append="hdc=ide-scsi"

The tape drive device would then be /dev/st0.

jwatco2001 · 06-30-2003, 06:40 PM

Thanks for the response. I assume since I use grub i want to add that to /etc/grub.conf? Do i need to reboot after?

Status Update. Ok I added append="hdc=ide-scsi" to my grub.conf file and restarted the system. Now when I do a:

mt -f /dev/st0 status

I get:

/dev/st0: No such device

Am I missing something?

michaelk · 06-30-2003, 07:55 PM

My falult,

See if the ide-scsi module is being loaded via
/sbin/lsmod

If not
modprobe ide-scsi

jwatco2001 · 06-30-2003, 08:12 PM

Ok, now do i add the modpro command to my grub.conf as well?? It was not loaded when i did a lsmod. What exactly do I do with it?

michaelk · 06-30-2003, 08:15 PM

It is a command

/sbin/modprobe ide-scsi

jwatco2001 · 06-30-2003, 08:18 PM

Thanks I typed :

modprobe ide-scsi

and right after that I typed:

mt -f /dev/st0 status

result:

/dev/st0: No such device

Do I need to reboot again?

michaelk · 06-30-2003, 08:50 PM

I guess I am trying to do too many things at once today.
Sorry about that.

You also need the st module

Again
modprobe st

dmesg | grep tape

Should spit out that it found your tape drive

Now try the mt command

jwatco2001 · 06-30-2003, 08:56 PM

Well, now it looks as if it does not like my tape drive

here is the results of the dmesg:

SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: OnStream Model: DI-30 Rev: 1.08
Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
st: Found incompatible tape at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
st: The suggested driver is osst.

jwatco2001 · 06-30-2003, 10:00 PM

ok, one more thing.. just trying something out.. . still don't really know what i am doing i did this:

modprobe osst

then did:

dmesg

results:

osst :I: Tape driver with OnStream support version 0.9.10
osst :I: $Id: osst.c,v 1.65 2001/11/11 20:38:56 riede Exp $
osst :I: Attached OnStream DI-30 tape at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 as osst0

But still get the same results out of mt -f /dev/st0 status:

/dev/st0: No such device

michaelk · 06-30-2003, 10:46 PM

BTW make sure you remove the ide-tape module

rmmod ide-tape

This looks hopefull
osst :I: Attached OnStream DI-30 tape at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 as osst0

Try /dev/osst0 instead of /dev/st0

jailbait · 06-30-2003, 11:20 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, now do i add the modpro command to my grub.conf as well?? It was not loaded when i did a lsmod. What exactly do I do with it?

One place you can put it is in /etc/modules.conf
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

jwatco2001 · 07-01-2003, 12:05 PM

Thanks for all the help. mt -f /dev/osst0 status will gives results.

However for some reason if there is a tape in the drive, it seems to lock up the system when I do that??? Also, i just tried to test out backing up to the drive by doing a:

tar cvf /dev/osst0 ./testfile

and I get:

tar: /dev/osst0: Wrote only 0 of 10240 bytes

by doing a dmesg i get:

osst0:I: Device did not become Ready in open

then the tape ejects itself.