[comp.sys.ncr] Tape Drive Light

mechjgh@texbell.swbt.com (01/12/90)

We have an NCR Tower 32/650 with NCR Unix 02.01.01.  When I use the NCR System
Administrator (sa) menus to do a PARTITION BACKUP to an internal 150 mb
cartridge tape drive in the bottom tape drive slot, the drive light stays on
after the PARTITION BACKUP is complete.  In fact, the only way I've been able
to turn it off is to do a COMPLETE SYSTEM SHUTDOWN.

We also do cpio backups under shell scripts and the tape drive light is
properly turned on and off.  But, even the completion of a cpio backup from
the shell script will not turn off the tape drive light IF it was on at the
start of the cpio backup from an sa PARTITION BACKUP.

Are other NCR Tower 32 users out there also having this problem?  And, if so,
does any one have a work around (short of complete system shutdown) and/or a
fix?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Walker                        |   email: uunet!fdls!dougw  |
Oregon Department of Agriculture   |     Tel: (503) 378-3790    |
Food and Dairy Division            |     Fax: (503) 378-5529    |
635 Capitol Street NE              |                            |
Salem, OR  97310-0110              |                            |
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steve@pmday_2.Dayton.NCR.COM (Steve Bridges) (01/12/90)

In article <2008@texbell.swbt.com> mechjgh@texbell.ogc.edu writes:
>[much text deleted about tape drive light...]

We have a similiar configuration here.  We do are backups a little
differently (well, actually a lot differently, but that is another
story.  If anybody is interested, I will post a summary to the net).

On one tower where I know they do incremental backups through SA, their
drive light stays on also.  The only way they know it is done is to
wait to get back to the menu from the backup procedure.  Their drive
lights stays on.

Perhaps if you retension the tape (run /menu/obj/retension.o), that will
turn the light off.  Also, in the 3400 Series Installation/Service/Diagnostic
Guide, it says what the various states of the drive light mean.  When I get
to the office tomorrow, I will post what it says.  

Perhaps somebody at E&M Columbia will post if the light staying what the
light staying on means while doing a partition backup.


-- 
Steve Bridges                    | NCR - USDPG Product Marketing and Support OLS
Steve.Bridges@Dayton.NCR.COM     | Phone:(513)-445-4182 622-4182 (Voice Plus)
..!ncrlnk!usglnk!pmday_2!steve   | AOPA #916233
..!uunet!ncrlnk!usglnk!pmday_2!steve| PP-ASEL, AMEL

akkanen@cs.Helsinki.FI (Jukka Akkanen) (01/12/90)

Yeah...  I've had similar difficulties on Unisys 5000/55 running SysV
rel 2.01 (I guess it's NCR Tower sold under another name, am I right?). 
The tape drive led will be lit forever after /etc/tension, but no other
tape operation causes that kind of problems. 

mechjgh@tness7.UUCP (Greg Hackney ) (01/12/90)

In article <816@pmday_2.Dayton.NCR.COM> steve@pmday_2.Dayton.NCR.COM (Steve Bridges) writes:
>In article <2008@texbell.swbt.com> mechjgh@texbell.ogc.edu writes:
                                       ^
                                       |
FYI, the article about the light was not from mechjgh@texbell.ogc.edu.
That is a non-existent site.

It was from uunet!fdls!dougw (Doug Walker)
--
Greg

dmdc@ncrsea.Seattle.NCR.COM (Dennis M. Dooley) (01/13/90)

In article <2008@texbell.swbt.com>  writes:
>We have an NCR Tower 32/650 with NCR Unix 02.01.01.  When I use the NCR System
>Administrator (sa) menus to do a PARTITION BACKUP to an internal 150 mb
>cartridge tape drive in the bottom tape drive slot, the drive light stays on
>after the PARTITION BACKUP is complete.  In fact, the only way I've been able
>to turn it off is to do a COMPLETE SYSTEM SHUTDOWN.
>
     Doug,

     I can't find a good excuse for the behavior you describe.  You may
     want to bounce this one off of CODAR if you don't have any luck on
     the responses from the net.  Rather than shutdown, next time while
     the tape is still in the drive, try entering  </dev/TAPE_DEVICE?.
     This should rewind the tape and shut the light off.

     Send me e-mail on the type of cartridge tape that you are using in
     the drive.

     Well thats my two cents worth...

________________________________________________________________________

Regards,
Dennis M. Dooley      Systems Engineering     NCR Corporation
ncrsea!dmdc           (206) 643-4150          15400 S.E. 30th Pl.
dennis.dooley@ncrsea.Seattle.NCR.COM          Bellevue, WA. 98007