[H-GEN] DAT Tape errors

[Steve Elliott]

(Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs Steve Elliott <steve at virtuozo.com.au>)

Michael Anthon wrote:
> 
> (Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs Michael Anthon <mca at tams.com.au>)
> 
> I have received some tapes from a customer that I am supposed to read.  The
> tapes are DDS2 and I have successfully read tapes provided by this
> organisation before (I even just reloaded an older one to make sure there is
> nothing screwy with my tape drive).
> 
> When I try to read the new tapes I get an I/O Error and these messages in
> the syslog
> 
> Jul  6 12:43:07 belial kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Current error
> st09:00: sense key Medium Error
> Jul  6 12:43:07 belial kernel: Additional sense indicates Positioning error
> detected by read of medium
> 
> I am suspecting that this means the tapes do not have any data on them.  Can
> anyone confirm or deny this suspicion?
> 
> Cheers
> Michael A


Maybe the tape was written off a different box than the previous tapes.
I've got a heap of sgi's here, and if the dat tape is written off a
different unix box ( hp, sun etc and maybe a different dat drive) i may
have to use a no byte swap device on the sgi

tar xvf /dev/mt/tps1d4nrns

or specify blocking factor

tar xvfb /dev/mt/tps1d4nr 20

or use a variable block size device

tar xvf /dev/mt/tps1d4nrv


or a combination.

Dunno if its relevant to linux but that's my experience from a variety
of sources.

Ain't exchanging dat tapes in unix grand ?

Maybe the tapes are empty - do ya get the same error shoving a brand new
one in ?
-- 
Regards,                                 
Steve Elliott.                           

Support Manager
VirtuoZo Systems
WWW:  http://www.virtuozo.com.au/

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