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SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

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I am having a bit of trouble with a HP Surestore dat 24i in one of my linux boxes. However, I have two other boxes configured almost identically and both are working fine (knock on wood or something harder).

Basic configuration :
AMD Athlon 1.0 Gig w/ Via KT133 chipset
Adaptec SCSI Ultra160 Controller
3x SCSI Seagate 18G HD (RAID 5)
HP Surestore 24i DAT
SCSI CD-ROM (generic brand)
256 Meg SDRAM PC133

Each of the machines are basically the same and the other two are working fine.This one however will start backing up, and then suddenly the drive stops writing and all activity ceases. After about 20 minutes or so, the tape kicks out and it demands another tape. However, this does not occur by any cycle that I can tell, andit has done this after backing up 7Gig, or as little as 100 Meg (using DDS3 drive/tapes).

I am currently using Arkeia backup software, however, this has also occured using dump/restore/tar. Upon looking at the /var/log/messages file, I see that everytime that it locks up, it reports that a power cycle has occured on the drive.

Has anyone else encountered this? If so, what was your solution?

I believe that this either points to a problem with the drive, or the SCSI controller. I’d be more apt to point to the drive since the other SCSI devices are working fine. Since this is in a production environment, I can’t take another server down for any real lenght of time to switch drives.

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SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

In reply to SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

BTW: This was working fine for a while (about 4 months), and now it’s acting up. About 2 months ago (a month after this problem cropped up), I had a drive die in the RAID that I had to replace.

SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

In reply to SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

Several thing could be wrong including the SCSI cable. There is a power signal pin in the SCSI cable. You are probably right about the controller. It might be easier for you to eliminate the cable first and then look at the drive. If disconnecting the drive doesn’t mean disconnecting any critical devices on the back end (further away from the server in the SCSI chain) then you can do this without shutting the server down. Your flavor of Linux may have some say in this, but you can scan fornew devices once they are added. Therefore you can switch tape drives and scan the SCSI chain. In fact, if you assign the same target number to the new drive (and it is an identical drive) you should be able to get away with doing nothing more.Good luck.

SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

In reply to SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

The CD-ROM is later in the chain, harddrives are the first three devices, followed by the tape drive, and then the CD.

I’ve got another cable for this : RedHat doesn’t appear to have a problem with the hotswap (no problems have been reported). I’m
actually testing the backup now –
although a back up could take 2 hours or more : /

Thanks for the help

SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

In reply to SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

One sure fire way to isolate the problem is to swap parts. Start by swapping the cables, if the problem stays, it’s not the cable, if the problem follows the cable, it’s the cable. If no problem, then swap the tape drive, again you can tell if it’s the drive by whether the problem follows the drive or not. (I would suspect a power supply problem).

Don

SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

In reply to SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

Unfortunately I don’t have a second tape drive to swap with it… although I am attempting to use another cable. Unfortunately, the backup procedure could take a few hours…

Thanks for the help

SCSI Card w/ tape drive issue

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