[KLUG Members] Server Problem (long)

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>Over the last few months I've been building a home server using RH 7.1
>using a mix of new and used parts. It's a 266Mhz PII with 384 meg of memory
>and a 32 meg ATI video board. The drive system consists of an Adaptec 29160
>controller with three Quantum 9.1 Gig SCSI's in a Raid 5 configuration.
>Also connected to this controller is a Seagate Scorpion-24 DDS-3 tape drive.
>I'm having a problem accessing this drive.
>When I issue the command "mt -f /dev/st0 status" (or any mt command) I
>receive no response from the tape drive and my session hangs. I then
>have to start a new session and reboot to free up the locked one. I know the
>drive works because it's brand new, and prior to loading Linux I installed a
>copy of NT 4 to check the hardware (since I have more experience with NT
>than Linux), and it worked fine, backing up and restoring. I checked
>Seagate's web site and the drive is compatible with Linux. However, the
>installation book has several specific setups for the different flavors of 
>Unix nvolving jumpers on the drive. No mention of Linux though.

st:bufsize 32768, wrt 30720, max init. buffers 4, s/g segs 16.
Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 7, lun 0

This indicates the ID of the drive is 7.  Many SCSI controllers use the ID of 7 
for themselves (default).  This would cause a problem.

We use Seagate DDS drives with Linux here, they work great.  On both Adaptec and
IBM controllers.

What distribution are you using?  The kernels from ~RedHat 6.2 did have some
problems occasioanlly with very fast tape drives.

Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505