[157] in linux-scsi channel archive
Tape backup problems
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ross Becker)
Sat May 6 14:03:31 1995
From: Ross Becker <beckerr@skynet.metalink.com>
To: linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
Date: Sat, 6 May 1995 14:35:17 -0400 (EDT)
Hello,
I am having some serious troubles with tape backups- here goes an attempt
to make a organized description of the problem. At this point, I know my info
is a bit sketchy, but, I am not certain how to go about tracking this problem
further- any records of the error do not seem to get written to disk, or, when
I reset, and the filesystems are checked, wiped out since they were not
completely written to disk. I am looking for suggestions on further tracking
the problem down or messages suggesting what might be going on.
Symptoms:
I am attempting to backup a 183 Megabyte filesystem on an Archive 150
tape drive; the tape is a DC6250; the 250 meg capacity tape that my drive
can handle. At some point fairly late in the backup, I hear the noise that
my tape drive makes when the SCSI bios initializes; I beleive it to be a
SCSI reset. At that point, the backup stops, and my system is fubarred. I
can type anything I want at a login shell, but when I hit return, it will
go to the next line, and sit there. I can still type in that vt/xterm, but
it does not process anything. X continues working; processing mouse events,
etc, and I once had PPP up, and an IRC session going in an xterm, and that
continued working, at least 10 minutes after the tape lockup. Ctl-Alt-Del
does NOT initiate a system shutdown, and, all I can do is a hard reset.
My system:
Archive 150 SCSI tape drive
Adaptec 2842A VL host adapter
kernel version 1.2.8
libc version 4.6.27
Slackware 2.0
486 DX2-80, 24 meg ram
What I have tried:
I have not successfully gotten any messages out of /var/adm/* that look like
they have anything to do with the tape lockup, no kernel oops, nothing.
I have attempted tar, and cpio backups, both with the same results.
I attempted to use dd if=/dev/st0 of=/dev/null bs=1024, to find out how far
the backup got, and it locked up, after a SCSI reset.
I have used 2 different tapes, both brand new.
The filesystem I am backing up is mounted on /u, and nothing is using any
of the stuff on the filesystem while the backup is going on.
Thanks,
Ross Becker
beckerr@skynet.metalink.com
