I having a tape drive problems, where I can't backup using the tape drive, it show me a initialization of the tape failed. What is the possible cause of this kind of problems? The tape is damaged? Any troubleshooting guide on regards to tape drive in Solaris? Command and how to, really appreciate somebody there can help.

So, what kind of tape drive? Internal, external? x86? SPARC? Brand of tapes? Age? How are you sending data to it? tar? ufsdump? Specific output & error messages? More information would be useful.

Typically, use mt to position, rewind, etc. and get the status of the drive/tape. Then tar, ufsdump, dd, Amanda to get data to the drive/tape.

Check /var/adm/messages to see error messages posted through syslog.

For some drives, such as internal DDS drives with a front bezel, check the lights. I don't remember off hand which is which, but there is a green blinking light for activity, another to the right that blinks yellow for accumulated errors and to indicate that you should use a cleaning tape. Newer drive types have fewer problems.

Assuming DDS, use a cleaning tape that isn't old or over-used. Then try a new tape. It could be the drive needed cleaning, or it could be that the tape was bad. When I was using DDS/3 drives, I relied on FUJI and SONY tapes. Some other brands weren't as reliable.

Of course, I could be just generating noise, because you might be using something totally different, or maybe it's an external drive and throwing SCSI errors. Please fill in the blanks.

Equipment: Sun StorageTek DAT 72 Tape Drive that connected to Solaris Sun Fire
Brand of Tapes: HP
Age: 4 months
Way of sending data: SCSI
Application in Solaris: Vendor specified backup application
Error Message: Fail to initialize

Please help, any command to check and troubleshoot?

Go back through my previous message.

Does mt work? (`man mt` for more detail if you aren't already familiar with it). `mt status` for starters.

Did you look through /var/adm/messages for any errors? In particular any tape errors, scsi errors, references to /dev/rmt/...

If you simply do a tar out to the tape (e.g. `tar -cvf /dev/rmt/0n /export/home/mydirectory`), does that work?

These steps are necessary just to make sure the operating system can address the tape drive. By the way, is this Solaris 8? 9? 10?

What is the vendor specified backup application? "Fail to initialize" must be an error coming from that application. While the error message might seem to imply that it found the drive and tried to access the tape, error messages can be obfuscating, and there are multiple other possible interpretations. Does that application have logs you can check or other test procedures to see if it is set up properly?

I am using SPARC Solaris 10.

When I issued mt status, it give me the following,

In the system, it doesn't have /rmt.

That means that either...

1) Tape drive is not mounted and you have to manually mount it
2) The Solaris machine cannot see the SCSI device...maybe a driver issue?


What's the output of

Did you buy this from Sun? If so, then you should be able to go to sunsolve and submit a ticket.

Just to clarify...

/dev/rmt/0n -- something in that path does not exist.

you specifically say "/rmt" does not exist. Was that a typo? Did you mean "/dev/rmt" does not exist? That would be weird. I have one Solaris SPARC system that has no internal or external tape drive, and it has /dev/rmt, although it is empty.

If you have /dev/rmt, but it is empty, that might mean you hooked up an external drive, but didn't bother doing the reconfigure reboot to get it into the device tree. You would do

# touch /reconfigure
# reboot

Then do `ls -l /dev/rmt` to see what's there. You could expect to see /dev/rmt/0n among others.

Did you install/connect this tape drive yourself?

See attached:



Please assist, how to manually mount? How to check if is the case of SCSI is not working? Yes bought it from Sun, how my going to submit ticket to Sun? Please help.

Sorry is rmt/ not exist. Yes I installed myself. See attached:

Did the command like the following help?

Did you do any/all of those commands in that sequence? That was really unnecessary, if so. Possibly, the `devfsadm -C tape` cleared out the /dev/rmt (read the man page for devfsadm), because there were no devices under it at that point. You should have only had to do the `touch /reconfigure; reboot` (notice there is no dot, and it is reconfigure, not configure).

If you haven't done any of them, and you have looked at /var/adm/messages (this is important) to confirm that you are not getting any errors there related to SCSI or tape, then just do `touch /reconfigure; reboot`.

After you have done that, then try `mt status`. Then go back and do the suggested testing to see that the tape drive works. And, please, take the time to read through the previous suggestions carefully and respond to them by answering them and providing output or error messages. This really shouldn't be that difficult to resolve.