FW: PowerVault 100T TR40 Travan

Tue Jan 28 09:48:00 CST 2003

You have to pass kernel option ide-scsi for the tape drive and it will then
start working right and become st0 just like a scsi unit.  If it is master
on secondary channel pass hdc=ide-scsi and it will then start working
correctly.
Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: bscott at ntisys.com [mailto:bscott at ntisys.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 9:23 AM
To: linux-poweredge at exchange.dell.com
Subject: PowerVault 100T TR40 Travan

  We have a customer who has a Dell PowerEdge 600SC with a PowerVault 100T
TR40.  Has anyone ever gotten one of these things to work reliably with
Linux?  We've had no end of trouble.  We've even had Dell field service
replace the drive, but it still doesn't work right.  I'm no fan of Travan to
begin with, but I wasn't involved in the purchasing decision on this one,
and this seems pretty bad even for Travan.

  Problems:

  - tar will write some amount of data (less then 500 MB) and then fail
    with a short write error.
  - tar or mt will randomly fail with "I/O error" messages
  - tar or mt will randomly hang in the D (uninterruptible sleep) state.
    Ejecting the tape will sometimes cause them to unwedge and abort;
    other times the system will need to be rebooted.
  - The drive will wedge and refuse to do anything (even eject the tape)
    until power cycled.
  - Tons of errors in the kernel log about the device whenever it is in use.

  Some of the kernel errors we see are:

- Error with sense data: Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
  Additional sense indicates Invalid command operation code

- st0: Error with sense data: Info fld=0x0, Current st09:00: sense key
Illegal Request
  Additional sense indicates Invalid command operation code

- aborting command due to timeout : pid 89209, scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Rezero Unit 00 00 00Jan 24 14:43:52 
  hdb: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
  hdb: ATAPI reset timed-out, status=0xd0
  ide0: reset: success
  st0: Error with sense data: Current st09:00: sense key Unit Attention
  Additional sense indicates Power on,reset,or bus device reset occurred

 We have tried several different tapes, all brand new, so we are fairly sure
the problem is not bad media.  We have also tried re-tensioning the tapes.

  I downloaded the latest Seagate tape diagnostics from

	http://www.seagate.com/support/tape/utils/stdiag.html

Whenever I try to invoke the "diagsvlx" utility, however, it just dies with
a Segmentation Fault.  Running "strace" shows that it is dying very early
on, during dynamic library initialization from the look of it.

  We are using the device in IDE/SCSI emulation mode.  The "ide-scsi" and
"st" modules are loaded.  The "ide-tape" module is *NOT* loaded.

  I have tried all three of the suggested commands in the Dell User Guide.  
Results are as follows:

# insmod ide-scsi
Using /lib/modules/2.4.18-10/kernel/drivers/scsi/ide-scsi.o
# hdparm -d0 /dev/hdb

/dev/hdb:
 setting using_dma to 0 (off)
 HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
 using_dma    =  0 (off)
# mt -f /dev/st0 stoptions no-blklimits
# 

  The system is a PowerEdge 600SC.  The OS is Red Hat Linux 7.3 (kernel
2.4.18-10).  The drive is a PowerVault 100T TR40 (20 GB IDE Travan).  It
appears to be a re-badged Seagate TapeStor Travan 40 (STT3401A).  It is
connected to the primary IDE channel on the motherboard, along with the IDE
CD-ROM.  The hard disks in the system are attached to an IDE RAID controller
(CERC ATA/100).

  Anyone have any ideas?

-- 
Ben Scott           | Net Technologies, Inc.  | 978-462-8795
Network Engineer    | Salisbury, MA, USA      | 866-NTI-LINUX (684-5468)
bscott at ntilinux.com | http://www.ntilinux.com | Fax: 978-499-7839

_______________________________________________
Linux-PowerEdge mailing list
Linux-PowerEdge at dell.com
http://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge
Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq or search the list
archives at http://lists.us.dell.com/htdig/