Formatting a tape?

[Jaime]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Andrew Hamilton-Wright <andrew at qemg.org> wrote:
> What happens if you use dd to try and write to the tape?
>
> The command
>        dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sa0 count=8
> should print out:
>        8+0 records in
>        8+0 records out

I tried this and the output was:
8+0 records in
8+0 records out
4096 bytes transferred in 0.036611 secs (111879 bytes/sec)

So then I tried my backup script (which is basically a tar command)
and got this on the console:
(sa0:ahc0:0:6:0): Unexpected busfree in Data-out phase
SEQADDR == 0x86
(sa0:ahc0:0:6:0): lost device
(sa0:ahc0:0:6:0): failed to write terminating filemark(s)
(sa0:ahc0:0:6:0): tape is now frozen- use an OFFLINE, REWIND, or MTEOM
command to clear this state.
(sa0:ahc0:0:6:0): removing device entry

On the ssh terminal / standard output, I got this:
tar: Write error: Input/output error

Now "camcontrol devlist" doesn't show the tape drive, even though it
did before.  So I use "camcontrol rescan all" and it comes back.  On
console, it says:

sa0 at ahc0 bus 0 target 6 lun 0
sa0: <QUANTUM DLT-V4 0A00> Removable Sequential Access SCSI-2 device
sa0: 160.000MB/s transfers (80.000MHz, offset 96, 16 bit)

So then I try:

mt -f /dev/sa0 rewind
mt: /dev/sa0: Device not configured
atlas:jkikpole>camcontrol devlist
<SEAGATE ST373207LW 0004>          at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0)
<SEAGATE ST373207LW 0004>          at scbus0 target 1 lun 0 (pass1)
<SEAGATE ST373207LW 0004>          at scbus0 target 2 lun 0 (pass2)
<LaCie BigDisk Extreme+ 3.AA>      at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (da0,pass3)

WTF?  Its gone again.  On console, I get:

(sa0:ahc0:0:6:0): lost device
(sa0:ahc0:0:6:0): removing device entry

I'm going to tinker some more and see if I can get this drive working
again.  I'll also try another tape.  (Its worth noting that I DID
manage to get a tape working thanks to mt -f /dev/sa0 fsf 1 && mt -f
/dev/sa0 rewind.)  More info later.

Thanks for the help

Jaime