Config of FC tape drives in Solaris 8 & 9

[SuperJan]

Hi

We are having a wee problem configuring the FC tape drives for Legato Networker on our Sun servers. I have already posted my query on the Networker forum and have been told it may be a Solaris OS or driver problem.

When I run "inquire" on one of our servers I can see the 4 LTO3 drives:

scsidev@7.2.0:IBM ULTRIUM-TD3 54K1|Tape
scsidev@7.2.1:IBM ULTRIUM-TD3 54K1|Tape
scsidev@7.2.2:IBM ULTRIUM-TD3 54K1|Tape
scsidev@7.2.3:IBM ULTRIUM-TD3 54K1|Tape

I can only see 2 drives assigned in Solaris :

# luxadm inq /dev/rmt/2cbn

INQUIRY:
Physical Path:
/devices/pci@9,700000/lpfc@2/st@2,0:cbn
Vendor: IBM
Product: ULTRIUM-TD3

# luxadm inq /dev/rmt/3cbn

INQUIRY:
Physical Path:
/devices/pci@9,700000/lpfc@2/st@2,1:cbn
Vendor: IBM
Product: ULTRIUM-TD3


How do I configure the other 2? We have run "reboot reconfigure" but it still only shows 2 drive paths.

Any suggestions welcome.

SuperJan

 

[daFranze]

I never used FC tapes under Solaris but have seen similar effects with robots and drives from different vendors under Networker.
My two cents:
1) I suggest to ask the vendor of tape drives/library if you need to install special software packages on this host. I guess they will just shrug their sholders, because it's just their business to sell...;-)
2) run a 'devfsadm -C' and run a inquire and luxadm again;
a test which used to work fine in old SCSI days: put a tape into drive and run a 'mt -f /dev/rmt/0 status' (replace 0 by 1 and 2 and 3 to test further drives)
3) if all these tests fail you could ask Solaris to completelty rebuild the device tree (!you should not do this if your system is already productive, and if your system is mirrored with SDS/SVM or Veritas VM, etc.! If you want to perform this run a backup to a remote host first, this may leafe your host unusable!)
more /etc/path_to_inst to another name; delete or rename _everything_ under /dev and /devices and reboot the system with "-ar" option ether in OBP or to the reboot command

Best Regards, Franz
--
UNIX System Manager from Munich, Germany

 

[SuperJan]

Thank-you Franz,

We are having ongoing discussions with EMC about this problem, I have tried your suggestion.

One thing I've noticed is that the Physical path of the devices in luxadm is as follows

# luxadm inq /dev/rmt/2cbn

INQUIRY:
Physical Path:
/devices/pci@9,700000/lpfc@2/st@2,0:cbn
Vendor: IBM
Product: ULTRIUM-TD3


Notice st as the driver and in /var/adm/messages at boot time we have the physical path described as follows

e] wa1040: found Sequential Access device at tgt2, lun0
e] wa1040: Vendor ID ='IBM '
e] wa1040: Product ID ='ULTRIUM-TD3 '
e] wa1040: Vendor/Product ID ='IBM ULTRIUM-TD3 '
e] wa1040: maxdma=16777216
e] wa1040: wa_attach: Auto Sensing enabled
o] wa1040 at lpfc1: target 2 lun 0
info] wa1040 is /pci@9,700000/lpfc@2/wa@2,0

possibly suggesting wa is the driver?

Thanks for your help, any advice is much appreciated.

Regards

Superjan

 

[daFranze]

well, the st driver is the standard _s_csi _t_ape, I don't know the wa driver. st driver should work (might need some changes in st.conf, but should word, at least basic actions). I think EMC must tell you which driver they prefere to have all features. Usually all drives (same type) use the same driver... ;-)

Best Regards, Franz
--
UNIX System Manager from Munich, Germany

 

[SuperJan]

Hi daFranze

I have just installed another FC tape library, a Scalar i500. The two FC tape drives are zoned in the fabric and I created a zone for the server so it could see the drives. This has worked perfectly and Solaris has assigned the device paths /dev/rmt/2cbn and 3cbn to the drives.

This means Solaris is OK, there must be some config problem with the CDL300. The CDL300 has 8 virtual drives, 4 assigned to unix. I will pass it back to EMC and hopefully find a solution.
Thanks for your help
SuperJan

 

[daFranze]

You are welcome Jan!

Best Regards, Franz
--
UNIX System Manager from Munich, Germany