[SunRescue] Tape help

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

I belive that means the tape drive requires cleaning.  Get several
cleaning tapes.
	Nick

On Sun, 6 May 2001, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:

> I've rescued a ArchiveST 4000DAT drive.  I hooked it up to my linux
> machine.  The boo sequnce picks it up:
> 
> SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
> scsi0 : QLogic ISP1020 SCSI on PCI bus 00 device 88 irq 17 MEM base
> 0xcc800000
>   Vendor: ARCHIVE   Model: Python 28388-XXX  Rev: 4.98
>   Type:   Sequential-Access                  ANSI SCSI revision: 02
> Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 5, lun 0
> st: bufsize 32768, wrt 30720, max init. buffers 4, s/g segs 16.
> 
> At this point though, I'm not really sure what to do next, since I've
> never used any sort of tape drive on any sort of unix before.  I gather
> that I'm generally supposed to use tar and gzip to create a compressed
> archive of what I want backed up, then I'm supposed to use dd to write it
> to tape.  And somehow mt fits into the mix.  
> 
> Now, this is a DDS-2 drive (I think, some sources indicate that it is
> DDS-90), but all I have are DDS-90 tapes (new in wrappers, except the two
> I've opened already).  There are two lights on the front of the drive.
> They are unlit by default.  When I put a tape in, one light turns a solid
> green, and the other blinks orange.
> 
> I can't write .tar files to the tape using commands like dd if=some.tar
> of=/dev/st0.  And using mt, mt -f /dev/st0 tell says mt: /dev/st0:
> Input/output error.  the retension and erase command also return the same
> error.  If I take the tape out, the tell command still returns the same
> error, but the retension and erase commands return: mt: /dev/st0: No
> medium found
> 
> Could someone please help me with this?  The guy I got it from thought it
> was working, but he had no further use for it (had upgraded and was going
> to chuck it).  Perhaps I was stupid to get used gear for my first tape
> drive (well, I have some 150s around, but I've never used them), but I
> take almost all old gear, and it is use this or don't do backups at all.
> 
> --
> Joshua Boyd
> 
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