5.0.6 IDE Tape Installation

[Bob Bailin]

"GB" <gianni@dgh.com.au> wrote in message
news:1060143678.168050@grimiore.conceptual.net.au. ..

> Hi All,
>
> I have a little problem with the installation of a travan IDE tape drive

in

> 5.0.6.
>
> The tape is a slave on the primary channel, followed the mkdev tape

prompts,

> but to no avail, the tape does not show in the hwconfig screen at boot-up.
>
> Any ideas??
>
> The system has all the patches installed for 5.0.6

It's generally not a good idea to put a tape drive as a slave on the
primary IDE channel, especially if your hard disk is the master on
the primary channel. It's possible your hard disk is configured as
the only device on its channel.

What are your other IDE devices, and where are they located?

Try moving the tape to the secondary channel. Make it master if
it's the only device on the channel. Use mkdev tape to
remove the old configuration and install the new one.

Bob

[tony@aplawrence.com]

GB <gianni@dgh.com.au> wrote:

>Hi All,

>I have a little problem with the installation of a travan IDE tape drive in
>5.0.6.

>The tape is a slave on the primary channel, followed the mkdev tape prompts,
>but to no avail, the tape does not show in the hwconfig screen at boot-up.

See [url]http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/tapenotfound.html[/url]


--
[email]tony@aplawrence.com[/email] Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: [url]http://aplawrence.com[/url]
Get paid for writing about tech: [url]http://aplawrence.com/publish.html[/url]

[Tom Podnar]

GB wrote:

>
> Hi All,
>
> I have a little problem with the installation of a travan IDE tape drive in
> 5.0.6.
>
> The tape is a slave on the primary channel, followed the mkdev tape prompts,
> but to no avail, the tape does not show in the hwconfig screen at boot-up.
>
> Any ideas??
>
> The system has all the patches installed for 5.0.6
>
> Thanks again
>
> GB

I'm assuming you have it on primary slave because there is a hard drive
on
primary master.

From the Seagate web site:
"Note: We strongly recommend that you do not attach your tape drive to
any 40-pin cable that is already connected to a hard drive or to a
sound card. Doing so may result in a decrease in the tape drive's
performance and may cause incompatibility issues with some of the
bus mastering drivers."

In other words, don't do this.

Having said that, it is also true that the OpenServer IDE tape
drivers are - uh - insufficient.

They've never been stress tested on newer tape drives with faster
computer systems. Although they MAY successfully open-for-read and
open-for-write in many cases, they won't pass through some of the
critical commands needed for device control, QFA, etc. They also
don't work with newer and more sophisticated non-Travan tape
drives such as the ATAPI versions of the Exabyte VXA and Sony AIT.

Until these issues are resolved, we would recommend only SCSI tape
devices to protect an OpenServer 5.0.6 system.

--
Best Regards,
Tom
---
D. Thomas Podnar - President [email]tom@microlite.com[/email]
Microlite Corporation 724-375-6711 Voice
2315 Mill Street 724-375-6908 Fax
Aliquippa PA 15001-2228 888-257-3343 Tollfree Sales
+---------------------------------------------------------+
|Makers of BackupEDGE 2.0* - Backup and Disaster Recovery |
|Software for Unix and Linux Systems - Now With Encryption|
|Supports: Tape Drives, Libraries, CD/DVD Optical Media |
|[url]http://www.microlite.com[/url] [url]ftp://ftp.microlite.com|[/url]
| * Now in Public Beta - Coming Soon! |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

[GB]

Thanks guys, will give that a try

best regards

GB


"GB" <gianni@dgh.com.au> wrote in message
news:1060143678.168050@grimiore.conceptual.net.au. ..

> Hi All,
>
> I have a little problem with the installation of a travan IDE tape drive

in

> 5.0.6.
>
> The tape is a slave on the primary channel, followed the mkdev tape

prompts,

> but to no avail, the tape does not show in the hwconfig screen at boot-up.
>
> Any ideas??
>
> The system has all the patches installed for 5.0.6
>
> Thanks again
>
> GB
>
>

[Bill Vermillion]

In article <3F310293.3AFB275B@microlite.com>,
Tom Podnar <tom@microlite.com> wrote:

>GB wrote:

>> I have a little problem with the installation of a travan IDE
>> tape drive in 5.0.6.

>> The tape is a slave on the primary channel, followed the mkdev
>> tape prompts, but to no avail, the tape does not show in the
>> hwconfig screen at boot-up.

>> Any ideas??

>> The system has all the patches installed for 5.0.6

>I'm assuming you have it on primary slave because there is a
>hard drive on primary master.

>From the Seagate web site:
>"Note: We strongly recommend that you do not attach your tape drive to
>any 40-pin cable that is already connected to a hard drive or to a
>sound card. Doing so may result in a decrease in the tape drive's
>performance and may cause incompatibility issues with some of the
>bus mastering drivers."

An aside here - noting particularly the 40-pin cable.

Installing a VXA IDE drive on a non-SCO system - all with high
performance devices and with a 100Mhz HD interface - the VXA at
66MHz would cause the system to hang.

in at least least some systems if you have a 100/133MHz drive you
cant not install any of the 66MHz products on that same cable -
even if it is top-of-the line 80-pin cable [actually it is an
80 wire cable not 80 pins]

Just a note as warning/heads-up to anyone who hasn't run across
this before.

>In other words, don't do this.

>Having said that, it is also true that the OpenServer IDE tape
>drivers are - uh - insufficient.

Thanks for that information.

>Until these issues are resolved, we would recommend only SCSI tape
>devices to protect an OpenServer 5.0.6 system.

On Linux systems things such as the VXA-IDE drive will run
under SCSI emulation and putting the <driveid>=ide-scsi in the
appropriate places in either lilo.conf or grub.conf

It will definitely panic the system [at least on the machine I
tried it on] with emulation SCSI under IDE.

If anyone needs this - send me email.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com