Hello

I’ve noticed that one of our Linux servers has the block size limited to 64KB. This problem is affecting our backups ro tape via tar command and we noticed the following error messages in the /var/logs/messages:

Dec 16 21:22:58 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st4: Block limits 1 - 8388608 bytes.
Dec 16 21:47:05 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st4: Failed to read 131072 byte block with 32768 byte transfer.
Dec 16 21:49:37 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st2: Failed to read 131072 byte block with 32768 byte transfer.
Dec 16 21:56:58 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st2: Failed to read 131072 byte block with 32768 byte transfer.
Dec 16 21:57:03 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st9: Failed to read 131072 byte block with 32768 byte transfer.
Dec 16 21:57:33 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st5: Block limits 1 - 8388608 bytes.
Dec 17 01:40:36 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st1: Block limits 1 - 8388608 bytes.
Dec 17 01:59:42 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st1: Failed to read 131072 byte block with 32768 byte transfer.
Dec 17 02:11:04 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st6: Failed to read 131072 byte block with 32768 byte transfer.
Dec 17 10:57:33 aoeptta02-rprbck02 kernel: st0: Block limits 1 - 8388608 bytes.

Can you guys please help us to fix this problem?

Best regards,

I believe Quota is implemented on the partition you are using for backup with block limits.

Can you show the o/p for

Hello,

It seams to me that there are no quota implemented. Here got the o/p:

[root@aoeptta02-rprbck02 ~]# mount
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7 on /nsr type ext3 (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5 on /tmp type ext3 (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p3 on /usr type ext3 (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)


[root@aoeptta02-rprbck02 ~]# repquota /nsr
repquota: Mountpoint (or device) /nsr not found.
repquota: Not all specified mountpoints are using quota.

Follow this link, as it explains the solution and cause to your issue

https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/270603

Hello deep27ak,

Thank you very much for your help. The only issue is that I'm not subscribed (it requires Red Hat Enterprise subscription) so I can't access the article even after login. Can you please help me on this matter?

Besr regards,

I will post the resolution as per Red Hat

The error message "st0 failed to read 131072 byte block with 32768 byte transfer" is highlighting that:

the application requested 32k read block size
the tape drive has reported back that the data on the tape was written using a 128k block size
it was therefore unable to read the remaining 75% of the block, ie, 96k
it reported this to userspace because data is lost during the transfer
It may be that this is occurring only at the beginning of read operations at the start of tapes, perhaps because some initial header blocks may be special sizes. It may therefore be possible to change the logical block size in the application to compensate for this variation.