DEC AlphaServer Tape ejection

[hfarmani]

Need help ejecting a DAT tape from AlphaServer 1000 runing DEC UNIX?

 

[mrmac228]

What do you mean?

Does the tape not eject when you press the eject button or do you want to eject it from a script. If the first one then check that nothing is writing to it or than a process has control of if (ps, or lsof perhaps). The second should be mt offline or supply -f to give the device file.

HTH

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by - Douglas Adams

 

[hfarmani]

Thanks for the help. I want to eject the tape however is possible.
The eject button is not working even at >>> prompt. In the DEC UNIX, no ps has a control of the device since the server was rebooted.

Is there a command at >>> command to eject tape? (By the way the tape drive is interal on an AlphaServer 1000A runing DEC UNIX 4.0E)

 

[pete91z]

What sometimes works with these drives is if you hold the tape eject button down and reboot the server.

 

[dblair]

DAT tape drive - holld the button down for 5 seconds and it should reset the drive - try this.
Or try (long shot) - mt -d /devicename rewind

 

[mkbppt]

The command
mt -d /dev/nrst0h offline or
mt -f /dev/nrst0h offline

and similar, should eject the tape out. But I had experience the same. The tape was not ejected even I pushed the button as suggested by dblair. Now I sacrificed the tape, changed it with exabyte, which had lower density.
Anyone has an old TZ tape drive? Please contact me via my private e-mail.

 

[chriseubank]

mt -f /dev/nrmt0h rewoffl

 

[hfarmani]

Thanks to everyone for the tips. None of tip has worked. Any command to the tape drive produces I/O Error. It appears that there is a HW problem, but I should be able somehow to get the tape out.

I appreciate any other tip.

 

[chriseubank]

Have you tried rebooting?

 

[hfarmani]

I have rebooted several time. One time I hold the Tape eject button during entire reboot process to no avail.

 

[chriseubank]

perhaps try re-creating the tape device with mknod and see if that works....could be corrupt..?

 

[mkbppt]

May be the device file is corrupted.
If it a TZ tape try recreating the device file. It it is the first tape drive, first remove all /dev/nrmt0*. Then in /dev directory do this command
./MAKEDEV tz*
If the TZ tape is connected and detected, then the associated device files will be created such as /dev/rmt0a /dev/rmt0b ... /dev/rmt0h, /dev/nrmt0a, /dev/nrmt0b
If this doest not work, please post the output of command "show dev" from >>> prompt. Good Luck

 

[chriseubank]

oh yes... MAKEDEV. sorry about that Too many unix flavours! There's just too many!!

 

[hfarmani]

Here is the result of doing MAKEDEV (taht is actualy a script using mknod. Now I have remove all the /dev/nrmt0* and not able to create the device.

#Cd /dev
#./MAKEDEV tz*
./MAKEDEV: No Match.
#ls MAK*
MAKEDEV MAKEDEV.log
#

>>>show dev

dka0.0.0.2000.0 DKA0 RZ2CA-KA N1H1
dka500.5.0.2000.0 DKA500 RRD47 1206
dka0.0.0.13.0 DRA0 3 member RAID5
dva0.0.0.0.1000.0 DVA0
mka400.4.0.200.0 MKA400 TLZ09 0305
ewa0.0.0.2002.0 EWA0 .....
pka0.7.0.2002.0 PKA0 SCSI BUS ID 7 5.57

 

[dblair]

DAT tape drives are unreliable - the tape is probably mangled inside the drive (sorry !!). I have seen this on a few occasions.

 

[chriseubank]

Yep. I would start pulling it apart at this point myself

 

[mkbppt]

The results of >>>show dev was
mka400.4.0.200.0 MKA400 TLZ09 0305
apparently your tape drive was tlz, one of the tape drive series.
Your your unability to eject the tape is probably the tape mangled inside. Be careful to pull it out, otherwise you will damage your drive.