*BSD News Article 94285


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.ysu.edu!news.radio.cz!newsbastard.radio.cz!news.radio.cz!CESspool!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.nacamar.de!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news
From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Problem with scsi tape drive
Date: 23 Apr 1997 21:31:40 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <5jlv3s$4bf@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <5ijqlg$gki$1@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>
  <33503168.3A08@onthenet.com.au>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6
X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669
X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F  93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:39623

Tony Griffiths <tonyg@OntheNet.com.au> wrote:

> > The drive is a segate tst8000  the software is freebsd 2.0

> >  I started a tar and realize that i didn't include all files (/ doesn't
> >  follow mounted devices) so I stopped  it with ^C. Well, now  whenever
> >  the tar reaches the point where it stopped the first time I get:
> >  tar: can't write to /dev/rst0 : Input/output error

> I would re-initialise the tape via-
> 
> # mt -f /dev/nrst0 rew
> # mt -f /dev/nrst0 weof 2
> # mt -f /dev/nrst0 rew

Certainly useless.  First, he's been using /dev/rst0, thus rewriting
the tape from the beginning anyway.  The `weof' marks will be over-
written if you rewrite the tape, so they are pointless.

I think the key is that these el-cheapo drives really require the tape
to be formatted, and the sudden abort caused the medium format to be
corrupted.  Alan, do you know whether that's true?  (Also, watch out
the console/syslog SCSI error messages.)  If so, you might try to use

	scsiformat -wq /dev/rst0.ctl

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)