Topic: Backup Tape Drive installation

[Frank]

Do anyone know the installation steps for Adaptec 29160N U160 SCSI controller card and VXA-1 internal tape drive to be added into the e-smith v4.1.2 production server? I am not sure whether the corr. kernel (2.2.16) support both devices. From RedHat forum I found that aic7xxx driver cannot be found in v7.0, which is the exact version being used by esmith 4.1.2. How can I put these devices to work in esmith?

Regards,
Frank

[Darrell May]

Frank wrote:
>
> Do anyone know the installation steps for Adaptec 29160N U160
> SCSI controller card and VXA-1 internal tape drive to be
> added into the e-smith v4.1.2 production server?

These commands are used for working with modules on the command line:

lsmod = list modules
insmod = install module
rmmod = remove module

Basically you need to load 2 modules and make sure other modules are not loading in conflict as the e-smith default is set to use ide-scsi if the scsi controller is not installed at the time e-smith is installed:

aic7xxx = Adaptec scsi controller
st = scsi tape

Start by issuing 'lsmod' to see what modules are loading.  Next edit /etc/modules.conf and you should see these two lines:

alias scsi_hostadapter ide-scsi
pre-install ide-scsi     modprobe ide-cd

Make a backup copy of /etc/modules.conf and if you have an ide cdrom, edit as follows.  If not simply remove the second line:

alias scsi_hostadapter aic7xxx
pre-install aic7xxx      modprobe ide-cd

Reboot e-smith and this should autoload the aic7xxx driver anytime a call is made to the scsi tape.  Test by simply issuing:

mt -f /dev/st0 status

If this doesn't work, try appending to the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local the following two lines:

insmod aic7xxx
insmod st

Regards,

Darrell

[Frank]

Darrell,

Based on your instructions I got the tape drive installed. But the e-smith backup job is terminated due to write error. Shall I need to format the tape first as it has been used in Win2000 server? What is the corresponding Linux commands?

Regards,
Frank


Console messages:
***********************
Jul  9 12:11:37 e-smith-S2 kernel: hdc: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
Jul  9 12:11:37 e-smith-S2 kernel: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.10
Jul  9 12:11:37 e-smith-S2 kernel: (scsi0) found at PCI 0/9/0
Jul  9 12:11:37 e-smith-S2 kernel: (scsi0) Wide Channel, SCSI ID=7, 32/255 SCBs
Jul  9 12:11:37 e-smith-S2 kernel: (scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 392 instructions downloaded
Jul  9 12:11:37 e-smith-S2 kernel: scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.31/3.2.4
Jul  9 12:11:37 e-smith-S2 kernel:        
Jul  9 12:11:37 e-smith-S2 kernel: scsi : 1 host.
Jul  9 12:11:41 e-smith-S2 afpd[1155]: e-smith-S2:AFPServer@* started on 65280.121:254 (1.4b2+asun2.1.3)
Jul  9 12:11:41 e-smith-S2 afpd[1155]: ASIP started on 192.168.0.6:548(2) (1.4b2+asun2.1.3)
Jul  9 12:11:43 e-smith-S2 kernel: (scsi0:0:11:0) Synchronous at 80.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 32.
Jul  9 12:11:43 e-smith-S2 kernel:   Vendor: ECRIX     Model: VXA-1             Rev: 2A6A
Jul  9 12:11:43 e-smith-S2 kernel:   Type:   Sequential-Access                  ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Jul  9 12:11:44 e-smith-S2 kernel: Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 11, lun 0

Tape Drive status messages:
*********************************
[root@e-smith-S2 /root]#  mt -f /dev/st0 status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x80 (unknown to this mt).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
 BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN

Error message:
*****************
Jul  9 12:13:00 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1237]: Processing event: conf-backup
Jul  9 12:13:00 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1237]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/conf-backup/S10conf-backup
Jul  9 12:13:01 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1237]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/conf-backup/S65conf-flexbackup
Jul  9 12:13:43 e-smith-S2 sshd[1259]: Accepted password for ROOT from 192.168.0.13 port 1181
Jul  9 12:13:43 e-smith-S2 PAM_unix[1259]: (sshd) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jul  9 12:15:00 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1293]: Processing event: mysql-delete-dumps
Jul  9 12:15:00 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1293]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/mysql-delete-dumps/S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables
Jul  9 12:15:00 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1298]: Processing event: mysql-dump-tables
Jul  9 12:15:00 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1298]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/mysql-dump-tables/S10mysql-dump-tables
Jul  9 12:15:56 e-smith-S2 kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Info fld=0x2800, Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
Jul  9 12:15:56 e-smith-S2 kernel: Additional sense indicates Write append error
Jul  9 12:16:38 e-smith-S2 kernel: st0: Error with sense data: Info fld=0x2800, Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
Jul  9 12:16:38 e-smith-S2 kernel: Additional sense indicates Write append error
Jul  9 12:16:38 e-smith-S2 kernel: st0: Error with sense data: [valid=0] Info fld=0x0, Current st09:00: sense key Illegal Request
Jul  9 12:16:38 e-smith-S2 kernel: Additional sense indicates Write append error
Jul  9 12:16:38 e-smith-S2 kernel: st0: Error on write filemark.
Jul  9 12:17:15 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1387]: Processing event: mysql-delete-dumps
Jul  9 12:17:15 e-smith-S2 e-smith[1387]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/mysql-delete-dumps/S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables

[Frank]

Darrell,

After perform detail investigations, I found that the default device name was 'nst0' used in '/sbin/esmith/backup' and '/etc/flexbackup.conf' in e-smith v4.1.2. Since the general device name used in common backup software is 'st0' for SCSI tape drive, the problem was solved after changing all 'nts0' to 'st0'. As e-smith advises not to change these configuration files, I used the 'Custom template modifications' to do the changes. (http://www.e-smith.org/custom). Tks.