[ale] SCSI Travan Tape Drive I/O Error

[Jeff Hubbs]

David Ritchie wrote:
>
> Under Mandrake 7.0-2 with Gnome/Enlightenment, I've got a Seagate
Hornet
> 20GB (Traval) SCSI tape drive sitting along with a Ricoh CD-RW drive
on
> an SIIG AP-10 Fast (narrow) SCSI card.  This card has auto termination.
> The CD-RW drive is unterminated and has SCSI ID 0.  The tape
drive is at
> the end of the cable and has its termination power and its termination
> enabled via jumper.  Parity checking is turned off via jumper
and is
> likewise disabled in the SCSI card's BIOS.
>
> Here is the kind of exchange I get when I try something like backing
up
> my /boot partition to tape:
>
>Â Â Â Â Â  # tar -cvf /dev/st0 /boot
>Â Â Â Â Â  tar: Removing leading `/' from archive
names
>Â Â Â Â Â  boot/
>Â Â Â Â Â  boot/lost+found/
>Â Â Â Â Â  boot/boot.b
>Â Â Â Â Â  boot/chain.b
>Â Â Â Â Â  boot/os2_d.b
>Â Â Â Â Â  boot/System.map-2.2.14-15mdk
>Â Â Â Â Â  tar: Cannot write to /dev/st0: Input/output
error
>Â Â Â Â Â  tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting
now
>
> Now, the command
>
>Â Â Â Â Â  mt -f /dev/st0 retension
>
> works, but
>
>Â Â Â Â Â  mt -f /dev/st0 datcompress
>
> (which is supposed to return the compression flag status of the drive)
> gives me
>
>Â Â Â Â Â  /dev/st0: Can't read SCSI mode page.
>Â Â Â Â Â  /dev/st0: Can't read compression mode
page.
This is due to the driver not knowing how to pull the mode pages correctly.
This drive is not compatible with the driver. The good news is that
it is
probably ok in non-compression mode. To fix this, you will need the
OEM
SCSI command spec that details how to access these mode pages. fun,
fun,
fun.... good luck!...
-- Dave Ritchie
der at atl.hp.com

Well, all I know is that Seagate's Web site calls the Hornet Linux-compatible
(see http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/tape/horn_scsi_sw_comp.html) and
that heavily influenced my decision to buy one.  I didn't expect any
showstopping problems other than the risk I ran that the combination of
Linux, the SIIG AP-10 card, and the Hornet might not get along.  I
am simply not equipped to debug/write tape drivers for Linux.
At this point, I don't know what it takes to turn compression on or
off, as the command
mt -f /dev/st0 defcompression -1
does execute but trying to tar to the drive results in the same input/output
error I described before.
I'm afraid that I'm blazing a nearly new trail here as I can't find
any specific information on getting this drive to work at all.  I
think I'm going to have to throw myself on the mercy of Seagate.
- Jeff
 
Â