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List:       linux-poweredge
Subject:    Not seeing tape drive?
From:       "Zembower, Kevin" <kzembowe () jhuccp ! org>
Date:       2006-08-31 18:31:48
Message-ID: 2E8AE992B157C0409B18D0225D0B476303DC1EB7 () XCH-VN01 ! sph ! ad ! jhsph ! edu
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I'm trying to follow Todd's excellent advice on restoring my system that
crashed completely. So far, I've been successful in installing an IDE
drive temporarily in the chassis and installing a minimal Debian Sarge
on it. I used the netinstall disk debian-dell-2.4.31 I found at
http://wiki.osuosl.org/display/LNX/Debian+on+Dell+Servers. It boots
correctly, and I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.8-3-686-smp. I'm even able
to mount the SCSI RAID drives under /mnt/ as required.

However, I'm not able to see the tape drive in this host. I thought I
used to access it as /dev/nst0, which I aliased to /dev/tape. The node
/dev/nst0 is there, but commands such as 'dd if=/dev/nst0 bs=32k
count=1' or 'mt -f /dev/nst0 status' return an error indicating that the
device isn't there, even with a tape in the drive. The drive is powered,
and accepts and ejects tapes normally. No cables to it have been changed
knowingly.

dmesg doesn't mention anything about the tape. When I had the 2.4
kernel, it seemed to find the tape and display information about it, but
I still couldn't connect using /dev/nst0.

I installed lsscsi, but it doesn't show anything. The dmesg with the
older kernel showed the tape at scsi1:A:6.

I must be overlooking something obvious. Any suggestions on what it
could be?

Thanks for your continued advice and support.

-Kevin

Kevin Zembower
Internet Services Group manager
Center for Communication Programs
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
111 Market Place, Suite 310
Baltimore, Maryland  21202
410-659-6139 

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