SGI: Hardware

Hi,

I was looking to getting a decent size tape system for backups on my irix boxes. I was looking at maybe a scsi exabyte VXA-2E anyone have any success getting one of these working on irix 6.5.xx?

Any thoughts or experiences appreciated.

Cheers

I don't know about Exabytes, but I've had no problems at all using various DLT drives on both Sun and SGI machines; I've plugged them in and they Just Work.

-Shel

competentcompton wrote: Hi,

I was looking to getting a decent size tape system for backups on my irix boxes. I was looking at maybe a scsi exabyte VXA-2E anyone have any success getting one of these working on irix 6.5.xx?

Any thoughts or experiences appreciated.

Cheers

Since I have pretty much any tape drive floating around at work...also where my Octane is, I went and checked it out for you. My octane is running 6.5.19F at the moment(I keep meaning to update it but keep not having time) and I can use the tape drive just fine. Scsi inquiry commands come back fine and mt works just fine as well. I ran a quick tar and that worked out fine too.

could you also try an ultrium?

foetz wrote: could you also try an ultrium?

I've tried one before, under at least 6.5.19 they have issues. I'm going to do a new install on the system Wednesday probably so I can run another test with a newer version of Irix. Are you looking for mainly LTO-1?

wolflord wrote:

foetz wrote: could you also try an ultrium?

I've tried one before, under at least 6.5.19 they have issues. I'm going to do a new install on the system Wednesday probably so I can run another test with a newer version of Irix. Are you looking for mainly LTO-1?

yes, 1 and 2.

thanks in advance

wolflord wrote:
Since I have pretty much any tape drive floating around at work...also where my Octane is, I went and checked it out for you. My octane is running 6.5.19F at the moment(I keep meaning to update it but keep not having time) and I can use the tape drive just fine. Scsi inquiry commands come back fine and mt works just fine as well. I ran a quick tar and that worked out fine too.

Hey thanks for checking that it. Sound like good news I'll probably go ahead and get one.

Thanks again

foetz wrote:

wolflord wrote:

foetz wrote: could you also try an ultrium?

I've tried one before, under at least 6.5.19 they have issues. I'm going to do a new install on the system Wednesday probably so I can run another test with a newer version of Irix. Are you looking for mainly LTO-1?

yes, 1 and 2.

thanks in advance

Ok, I had a bad drive for the first go round it seems...on the second drive Irix sees it as a generic 'cartridge device'. I was able to do the scsi inquiry commands, mt status commands and read and write to a tape using tar. In this case both drive types LTO 1 and 2 were scsi attached. Still running 6.5.19.

wolflord wrote: Ok, I had a bad drive for the first go round it seems...on the second drive Irix sees it as a generic 'cartridge device'. I was able to do the scsi inquiry commands, mt status commands and read and write to a tape using tar. In this case both drive types LTO 1 and 2 were scsi attached. Still running 6.5.19.

good enough for me. much thanks!

Hi,

long time since I first posted this.

I tried an EXABYTE on an irix machine and no luck thus far.

hinv reports

Tape drive: unit 6 on SCSI controller 1: unknown

Then when I try to use anything such as status I get the following

mt -f /dev/mt/tps1d6

No such device

I need to try this with a different machine to see if it a bad tape unit, but so far the EXABYTE is not working??

Any thoughts anyone??

Cheers

IRIX uses /var/sysgen/master.d/scsi to identify and define the capabilities of tape drives. The file contains several for the Exabyte *8200 and 8500 8mm*, but no VXA-2 If there are any drives with similar hardware technology, you might be able to modify one using the procedure outlined in the nekowiki: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... r_IRIX_6.5 I'd strongly recommend you make a backup of the original /var/sysgen/master.d/scsi before you make any edits.

Some manufacturers wrote their own IRIX definition files - though it doesn't appear that Exabyte/Tandberg released one for the VXA-2 series:

http://www.exabyte.com/support/online/d ... rod_id=400
http://www.exabyte.com/support/products ... pe%20Drive

Hi,

Thanks, I was playing with scsiha to see what it was reporting first, and then I thought I would dive into that file.

I wonder is wolfblitz? (sorry I forgot your name ) who said that it worked may have and entry in

/var/sysgen/master.d/scsi for the EXABYTE

It is a vxa-2 BTW.

Thanks for the link

Cheers