Adding a tape Drive

[Kegnut]

Hello,

I'm in the process of adding an Exabyte 8mm Mammoth tape drive to a Sun Blade 100 running Solaris 8.

After connecting all the cables and issuing a boot -r, it seems as though the system recognizes the device because all the character files in /dev/rmt/* showed up. However, when I placed a tape into drive and issued a
tar -tvf /dev/rmt/0 I received "Error: no such device /dev/rmt/0".

Is there some sort of extra process in this? Thanks in advance for the help.

Josh

 

[ptwork]

Just because the files are in /dev/rmt does not necessarily mean things are configured properly. Those guys could in theory still be left over from a previous drive. Here are a couple of thoughts or things to try. First, do a long listing of /dev/rmt/0 to make sure it is pointing to the proper scsi ID for that drive.
ls -l 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 85 Mar 5 16:23 0 -> ../../devices/iommu@0,10000000/sbus@0,10001000/espdma@5,8400000/esp@5,8800000/st@5,0:

In this case, the st@5 is telling me that this device is at target 5, LUN 0. If I knew that I had my drive set to target 4, I would know that this is a problem.

If it does not, are there other device files in /dev/rmt? Do the same thing and see which one points to the correct target. If you only have one drive connected and you have 0,1,2 etc in this directory, then you have old files hanging out. boot -r does not typically clean out the old files, but adds on, so you may have more device files then devices. You can clean this up safely by removing the contents of the directory prior to the boot -r.

Also, another point, you may not have to do the boot -r. If the drive is hooked up, I usually recommend this.
Remove existing files in /dev/rmt.
Run the following two commands (no flags needed)
drvconfig
tapes

If the above doesn't do the trick, post back and I will give other ideas...a snip
of your probe-scsi output from the ok prompt might prove useful.
Good luck
pt

 

[imsnowman]

You can also try devfsadm to add devices such as tapes and drives in solaris 7 11/99 and above.

 

[Kegnut]

Thanks for the responses. Very helpful tips in here. Here is my status as of today.

This is a brand new machine with a brand new tape device, so there were none of the dev/rmt files in there originally. I can see the drive by probe-scsi-all. My cabling is kinna messed up...I have a VHDCI PCI SCSI Host Adaptor, Centronix 50 pin Plextor CD burner, and the exabyte which I believe is LVD Ultra SCSI 2. But I dont think that has anything to do with it because the sys recognizes the drive.

So, all the files in /dev/rmt point to the right device and probe-scsi-all shows device. However, I still get the "Error: no such device /dev/rmt/0" any time I point to that device. Ive tried 0b, 0h, 0hn for shits and giggles, knowing that probably has nothing to do with it, and that didn't work either.

Yes, all the device files are in the /dev/rmt directory.

Here is output from probe-scsi-all (keep in mind, in order for me to get the probe-scsi-all command to work, from init 0 i have to change the environments for auto-boot? and diag-switch?...dont know why)

ok probe-scsi-all
/pci@1f,0/pci@5/scsi@0,1
Target 4
Unit 0 Removable Tape EXABYTE EXB-8900 V41j
Target 5
Unit 0 Removable Read Only Device PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W1210S1.01

/pci@1f,0/pci@5/scsi@0

Thanks in advance for any more help. Really appreciate it.

Josh

 

[johnhoke]

Just out of curiosity, which scsi card did you buy for your sunblade 100? I have a blade here, and am thinking of adding a scsi card for external tape and storage

Thanks in advance

-john ---
John Hoke

 

[Guest_imported]

Does this command return any information on the tape drive? mt -f /dev/rmt/0 status. If not try this command mt -f /dev/rmt/1 status. Verify that vold is running. ps -ef |grep vold. If not try starting it up.

 

[bhawani123]

hello josh,

Just check the /dev/rmt/ directory file.If all file start from 1 than try.

tar tvf /dev/rmt/1

thanks,
ajay