Re: [Dump-users] QFA on DLT drives?

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On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Stelian Pop wrote:

> Could this be a bad tape?

I thought that as well, but I tried several tapes (including two new ones)
and they all gave this errors.
Then I blamed the tapedrive.
In the end I found out that these error started occuring the day I
adjusted the dump scripts to have -Q....
As soon as I removed that option the tapes (and drives) are doing just
fine. At least my hardware is still OK.

> Try to write less data to the tape
> for example, since the error seem to happen through the end of
> the tape.
>
> > De manpage says something about setting up the st driver to return logical
> > tape position rather than physical.
> > I have no idea how I should do this...
> > Should this be done using the mt program or should I do something with the
> > kernel?
>
> mt stoptions scsi2logical

Ah this might be of some help!
When I issue "mt stoptions" (without options, I guess this will just list
the current options?), I see this in my dmesg:

st0: Mode 0 options: buffer writes: 1, async writes: 0, read ahead: 0
st0:    can bsr: 0, two FMs: 0, fast mteom: 0, auto lock: 0,
st0:    defs for wr: 0, no block limits: 0, partitions: 0, s2 log: 0
st0:    sysv: 0 nowait: 0

When I issue the command you say, I see:

st0: Mode 0 options: buffer writes: 0, async writes: 0, read ahead: 0
st0:    can bsr: 0, two FMs: 0, fast mteom: 0, auto lock: 0,
st0:    defs for wr: 0, no block limits: 0, partitions: 0, s2 log: 0
st0:    sysv: 0 nowait: 0

When I try to write a tape after doing "mt stoptions scsi2logical" only
the first dump seems to succeed. The second one errors out:

  DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Thu Apr 22 15:20:11 2004
  DUMP: Dumping /dev/sda2 (/) to /dev/nst0
  DUMP: Added inode 8 to exclude list (journal inode)
  DUMP: Added inode 7 to exclude list (resize inode)
  DUMP: Label: none
  DUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
  DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
  DUMP: estimated 7453588 tape blocks.
  DUMP: writing QFA positions to /root/backup/indexfiles/index-2004-04-22-Thu-15:20.sda2
  DUMP: Volume 1 started with block 1 at: Thu Apr 22 15:20:19 2004
  DUMP: dumping (Pass III) [directories]
  DUMP: dumping (Pass IV) [regular files]
  DUMP: 31.16% done at 7741 kB/s, finished in 0:11
  DUMP: 56.85% done at 7061 kB/s, finished in 0:07
  DUMP: 80.24% done at 6645 kB/s, finished in 0:03
  DUMP: Closing /dev/nst0
  DUMP: Volume 1 completed at: Thu Apr 22 15:39:05 2004
  DUMP: Volume 1 7515700 tape blocks (7339.55MB)
  DUMP: Volume 1 took 0:18:46
  DUMP: Volume 1 transfer rate: 6674 kB/s
  DUMP: 7515700 tape blocks (7339.55MB) on 1 volume(s)
  DUMP: finished in 1124 seconds, throughput 6686 kBytes/sec
  DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Thu Apr 22 15:20:11 2004
  DUMP: Date this dump completed:  Thu Apr 22 15:39:05 2004
  DUMP: Average transfer rate: 6674 kB/s
  DUMP: DUMP IS DONE

  DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Thu Apr 22 15:39:06 2004
  DUMP: Dumping /dev/sdc1 (/opt/backup) to /dev/nst0
  DUMP: Added inode 8 to exclude list (journal inode)
  DUMP: Added inode 7 to exclude list (resize inode)
  DUMP: Label: none
  DUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
  DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
  DUMP: estimated 37700032 tape blocks.
  DUMP: writing QFA positions to /root/backup/indexfiles/index-2004-04-22-Thu-15:20.sdc1
  DUMP: Volume 1 started with block 1 at: Thu Apr 22 15:40:08 2004
  DUMP: dumping (Pass III) [directories]
  DUMP: dumping (Pass IV) [regular files]
  DUMP: 4.09% done at 5140 kB/s, finished in 1:57
  DUMP: [29885] error: 5 (getting tapepos: 1008893)
  DUMP: write error 2573240 blocks into volume 1: Input/output error
  DUMP: Do you want to rewrite this volume?: ("yes" or "no")
^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G
^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G
^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G
^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G

Again, this very tape gets written to perfectly if I leave out the -Q from
my backup script.
Maybe I need to issue "mt stoptions scsi2logical" before every dump?
I will test this tonight.

Best ragards,

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