morley@hrdwre.Cambridge.NCR.COM (Debbie Morley) (10/21/88)
We are using an HP 35401A 1/4" Cartridge Tape Autochanger to backup four HP series 9000/350SRX workstations over a LAN at night via crontab entries. The four HPs are daisy-chained on ThinLAN, with the Autochanger directly connected to one of the workstations. Periodically, with no observable patterns, one of the HPs fail to backup. The error message that is logged is "errno 5, can't write output tape". We have checked the crontab entries, there does not appear to be a problem with the tapes (we have tested several scenarios), and there appears to be enough memory (250K LAN memory). Has anyone experienced similar problems with backups? Any sugggestions would be appreciated. -- CSnet: Debbie.Morley@Cambridge.NCR.COM UUCP: pyramid!ncr-sd!ncrlnk!ncrcam!hrdwre!morley VoicePlus: 621-1328, Other: 614-439-0328
ray@vantage.UUCP (Ray Liere) (10/29/88)
We have a series 500, so our experiences may not apply directly,
but here goes ...
Did you, along with your error 5, get an errinfo value? That sometimes
provides more specific information.
We had lots of problems with our cartridge tape unit when the system was
originally installed. You may want to have HP look at the units -- they
contain an error log which the CE can read (on a digital display inside
the disk+tape unit). That is what allowed our CE to pinpoint the problems.
[Our cartridge drive is in disk unit, so perhaps your setup will be
different insofar as a log is concerned.]
Much later, we also had a rash of problems -- apparently due to the system
being poor at/ambiguous about error recovery. There would be a bad
spot on the tape (I guess), which sometimes the system would spare
out, sometimes it would accept, and sometimes it would die on.
At any rate, re-certifying our tapes solved that series of problems.
(P.S. to Debbie Morley: we have been having trouble with our note
postings getting out -- if you see this, would you let me know via email?
Thanks.)
Ray Liere
mail: Vantage Consulting and Research Corporation
1017 Molalla Avenue, Suite 3
Oregon City, Oregon 97045, USA
voice: (503)657-7294
uucp: hplabs!hpfcla!hpubvwa!vantage!ray