On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 6:00 PM Pietro Paolini < [email protected]> wrote:
> On a x86-64 Dell, the tape drive is an HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960. > > XXXX# tar cf /dev/rst0 ./test.txt > XXXX# mt -f /dev/nrst0 rewind > XXXX# tar xf /dev/rst0 .out > tar: Failed read on archive volume 1: Input/output error > tar: Unable to recover from an archive read failure. > tar: Sorry, unable to determine archive format. > > What can I do to diagnose the problem ? Using other utilities such as > pax did not make any difference. > That model is an LTO3 tape drive, which at this point is very old. Did you purchase it used, by chance? It's possible that the hardware is simply defective. I've bought several used tape drives and while most of them worked fine, some did not. I think I had one that didn't work until I ran a cycle with a cleaning cartridge. It's also possible that your tapes are defective. I've bought tapes on eBay where it turned out that 2 out of 3 tapes in the box were bad. I use LTO2/4 drives routinely with dump/restore, and very occasionally with tar, and there is nothing special you have to do to make it work. SCSI and SAS drives work equally well (I have both). The only thing special about LTO is that you have to match the tape and drive. An LTO3 tape drive will read LTO1, LTO2 and LTO3 tapes, but it will not write LTO1 (only 2 and 3). So your diagnostic steps should include: 1. run a cleaning cartridge cycle 2. try a different tape (from a different batch or manufacturer) 3. try another drive -ken
