Topic: IDE Tape Drive

[Devlyn Davis]

Hey Folks,

I am attempting to add an IDE Tape Drive to an SME 5.1.2 server.  My main question is:  After installing the drive, does it 'just work?'  Meaning will SME automatically recognize the drive or is there any configuration that I have to do?

Now, I did read Darrell's How-to, but there is a slight problem.  The primary IDE channel on my test server does not work.  So, I have the IDE hard drive as the master and the tape drive as the slave on the secondary IDE channel.  Will this configuration work?  The tape drive shows up as hdd in dmesg.  However, when trying 'mt -f /dev/st0 status' I get the message 'device does not exist.'

Also, when trying to enable the tape drive using the server-manager, I get the error
'Software error:
Error occured during conf-backup event. '  This is obviously because there is some config problem.

I've read some of the posts about changing config files to point to nht0 instead of st0.  Is that necessary?

I appreciate any advice that can be tossed my way.

-Dev

[Andrew Roberts]

My tape drive "just worked" out of the box.  Mind you, I installed SME on the machine _after_ the drive was installed.  Can you check in your BIOS that the drive is detected.  You could also have a look throug /var/log/dmesg and look to see that your drive is being detected.

The only problem that I can see with using the tape drive on a shared channel is that some of the data might not be streamed smoothly.

Cheers,

Andrew

[Duane Rinehart]

I have searched through the forums but can't seem to get my tape drive running.  It's an HP Colorado 14GB ATAPI.  I've tried the mt -f /dev/st0 status but nothing.  Is there somewhere else I can check to see if it's available?

[jb]

By default, the SME server is set up for a SCSI device, not an IDE device.

You can confirm this by looking at the flexbackup.conf file in /etc/flexbackup.conf

Look for this line $device - '/dev/nst0'

Also goto /sbin/e-smith and look at the file backup.  You should see many lines with /dev/nst0.

To make sure your backup will work you can do the following for testing.

Make a backup copy of your flexbackup.conf file and then edit flexbackup.conf and change the nst0 to nht0.

Make a backup copy of the backup file and then edit it and change all nst0 to nht0.

Then execute \sbin\e-smith\backup.  If it starts backing up, then your in business, you know what the issue is.

The only downside to the above is if you disable then re-enable backups again, you have to go through all this mess again.


Now, how do you make this setting permanent?  I believe there is a DB setting you can change which will make this change stick.  But, I can't find in my notes what to do.  I'll keep looking if anyone is interested.  I need to re-find this solution for myself.  I now have a test box that has an IDE tape drive and had to make the above changes as well.

JB

[Duane Rinehart]

I used the /dev/ht0 instead of /dev/st0 etc. and received a message other than "no device present".  I suppose this is due to the fact that I'm working with a Colorado Tape Backup and not the "recommended" IDE backups.  Regardless I'll just have to stay under the limit so I can still say I've got good backups.  Perhaps if I get close to the backup capacity of the tape (14GB), currently 3GB on drive - I'll get a SCSI one from the list. (mainly speed consideration)  

My solution for the permanent config is the following for IDE tape backups in SME...

Copy /dev/st0 to /dev/st0_old and
/dev/nsh0 to /dev/nsh0_old

Create symbolic links from SCSI to IDE...

ln -s /dev/st0 /dev/ht0

and the same for nst0/nht0

With the symbolic links SME custom configuration is avoided and my backup still runs without any problems!  Voilà !

[Hugo Snellen]

I have the same situation i.e. I have added a IDE tape drive after system configuration.
Having made the 2 symlinks I get the following message when trying:

[root@serveur dev]# flexbackup -fs all

flexbackup version 0.9.8
/etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK

|------------------------------------------------
| Trying "mt defblksize" instead of "mt setblk"
Error setting block size
Neither of these commands worked:
  mt -f /dev/nst0 setblk 0
  mt -f /dev/nst0 defblksize 0

Any further help is much appreciated
Hugo