Re: IDE tape problem in 2.2.17 on Intel SMP

[jim@rubylane.com]

Thanks for the info.  We're running 2.2.17 from www.kernel.org w/o
any patches.

Jim

> 
> Greetings!  You're not running the ide patches, are you?  We're
> running 2.2.17 with the patches, and have found that we must use the
> ide-scsi interface to get verifiable backups.  We still get apparently
> harmless error messages in the logs though.
> 
> Here are our modules.conf entries:
> 
> pre-install ide-scsi echo ide_scsi:1 > /proc/ide/hdc/settings 
> post-install ide-scsi echo using_dma:0 > /proc/ide/hdc/settings
> pre-install ide-tape echo ide_scsi:0 > /proc/ide/hdc/settings
> pre-install st /sbin/modprobe -k ide-scsi
> 
> We then use /dev/nst0.
> 
> I believe these sysctrl parameters are only available with the ide
> patches.  You might be able to replicate the functionality with module
> options if you're not using the patches.
> 
> Take care,
> 
> jim@rubylane.com writes:
> 
> > I wrote on Nov 2nd about IDE tapes no longer working in 2.2.17.  The
> > write seems to work fine, but the verify pass causes read errors and
> > a tar abort.
> > 
> > I tried changing the priority of the tar process to higher than all
> > others (it was running as a very low priority job and I thought that
> > might be a contributing factor), but the higher priority did not help.
> > 
> > I tried restoring the last file from the tape.  One day it failed with
> > an "unexpected EOF" error, the next day it restored the file correctly
> > (even though we got the 12 read errors on the verify pass and tar
> > aborted).
> > 
> > My conclusion is that the tape write is working.  The drive has
> > hardware read after write verification, so I kinda thought this was
> > the case.  But IDE tape reads appear to be flakey on an active SMP
> > setup (Intel).  This problem started the day we switched from 2.2.16
> > to 2.2.17, without any other software or hardware changes.
> > 
> > If I can be of any further help, let me know.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Jim Wilcoxson
> > Owner, www.rubylane.com
> > -
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> > 
> 
> -- 
> Camm Maguire			     			camm@enhanced.com
> ==========================================================================
> "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah
> 

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