Subject: heads-up about SCSI tape drives

From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 15:51:31 -0400

I've been having a lot of problems with my SCSI tape drive in the
past week or so ("Unrecognizable archive", etc.).  Another user
also told me in private email that he'd also been having trouble with 
his SCSI tape drive.  (I have an Exabyte 8505; I do not know what kind of 
SCSI tape drive the other user had.  I do not know if these problems occur
with DATs.)

Dirk Eddelbuettel kindly suggested today that I try the new (2.0.13)
kernel.   I took his advice and it worked.  (Nothing new there!)  

Suggestion:  if you have a SCSI tape drive, you might wish to check that 
you can read from it, and/or you might wish to upgrade your kernel.

Susan Kleinmann

---

From: Bill Wohler <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 18:14:09 -0700

> you can read from it, and/or you might wish to upgrade your kernel.

  Here's a data point: I didn't have any problems reading my Exabyte
  SCSI drive with 2.0.0 last night when I upgraded my home box to 1.1.5.

  One thing to think about is the blocksize.  If you've run "mt -f
  /dev/st0 setblk 0" (which is good for reading tapes written by SunOS
  and AIX I have found) you won't be able read tapes written with the
  default block size (whatever that is) and vice-versa.

  I haven't done any performance tests to compare the effects of
  different block sizes but would be interested to hear from others
  who have (I use tar for backups).

Bill Wohler <[email-masked]>

If you think you're getting your money's worth, vote for Dole or
Clinton--it doesn't matter.  If you don't, vote for someone else.

---

From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 07:37:12 -0400

Hi Bill --

>   who have (I use tar for backups).

I have tried a lot of blocksizes and reboots between them with no
difference (or improvement).

Give tob or afio directly a whirl (if you have time).  I know I've got a 
sick 9 GByte disk drive (and we're going to the doctor tomorrow), and 
it's not clear whether or not my tape problems are related.
In any case, it's awfully curious why I am not having problems with tar
but do have awful problems with afio on the same (350 MByte) directory.

Cheers,
Susan