[comp.sys.sun] Exabyte tape drive & SunOS 4.0.3

rjj@mssun7.msi.cornell.edu (Rich Jaenson) (08/01/89)

I just upgrade the system from SunOS 3.5 to SunOS 4.0.3.  At the same
time, our department bought an Artecon 8mm tape drive.  Since the server
which is a 3/260 has no SCSI port, I connect the tape drive to one of its
clients which is a 3/50. So all dumps are remote. Here comes the odd
things. I can dump the files and there is no error reported.  But I can
only read some of the file systems. After trying a lot of experiments, I
find that one of the disk partitions gives me problem, I cannot read any
file system after that file system. I even tried to re-format the disk,
which is a SMD disk and the result is still the same. I have no idea of
what is going wrong.  Here is the error message appearing on the console
of that client when I try to read that file system:

st0:  failed cmd =  11  1  0  0  2  0  
st0 error:  sense key(0x9): vendor unique
	sense = 70  0  9  0  ff  ff  ff  12  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  40  0  0  1f  b7  e9  0  0  
st0:  failed cmd =  11  1  0  0  1  0  
st0 error:  sense key(0x9): vendor unique
	sense = 70  0  9  0  ff  ff  ff  12  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  40  0  0  1f  b8  c  0  0  
st0:  file positioning error

What does "vendor unique" mean?  Does anyone has a similar problem?

					Rich Jaenson
					(rjj@mssun7.msi.cornell.edu)

weber@uunet.uu.net (Jeff Weber) (08/21/89)

In article <709@brazos.Rice.edu> rjj@mssun7.msi.cornell.edu (Rich Jaenson) writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 91, message 7 of 16
>
>I just upgrade the system from SunOS 3.5 to SunOS 4.0.3.  At the same
>time, our department bought an Artecon 8mm tape drive. I connect the tape 
>drive to a 3/50. All dumps are remote. Here comes the odd
>things. I can dump the files and there is no error reported.  But I can
>.....

I am not sure about the specific error message you have, but here is my
experience with a Delta Microsystems 8mm tape.

I put it on, installed the driver and would have problems with the drive
prematurely thinking it was at the end of the tape. Apparently when a read
occurs, and 0 bytes are returned, it assumes end of tape. The problem
turned out to be a bad(?) or flaky SCSI port on the 3/50 itself. It worked
functionally, but a random times, it would read 0 bytes and think it was
at end of tape.

Putting the tape on a different 3/50 cured the problem.

Russ Poffenberger
Schlumberger Technologies
poffen@sj.ate.slb.com