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Cannot read/write tapes from some drives

Alexander_Harri
Level 4

I'm having problems with some of my drives where Netbackup can't read/write some drives. The tape is moved to the drive properly, however it hangs at the "mounting..." phase.

 

The robot control commands work fine (in robtest and netbackup) and in robtest, the media id is displayed.

 

2 of these are attached to the master server (one is inline with the robot control which works).

1 of these is attached to a Netapp filer (this one appeared to work for a while after it was replaced)

 

I've tried tightening the SCSI cables.

I've tried replacing the drives, but the problem persists. I have setup the drives in netbackup correctly.

 

Library: Qualstar 68120

Netbackup version: Netbackup 6.5.2a

 

 

Message Edited by Alexander Harris on 09-05-2008 11:39 AM
10 REPLIES 10

sdo
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Certified

Appeared to work, or definitely did work, after it was replaced?

 

NetBackup manages tape drives using "serialization", i.e. NetBackup uses the tape drive physical "serial numbers" to manage the tape drives themselves.

 

After replacing a tape drive, NetBackup administrators usually have to amend the NetBackup device configuration to kind of re-register the drive with it's new serial number.

 

Try this for Unix:

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/271366.htm

Alexander_Harri
Level 4

The NDMP drive appeared to work in that it was able to complete a few jobs and then failed after 1 hour (completing a few jobs in the interim).

 

The tape it was writing to was successfully written to by another drive after the drive started having problems.

 

 

sdo
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Certified

I'm not that hot on NDMP direct attached tape drives, or NDMP device control backups - I've only ever done three way remote host backups via the NDMP data mover on a media server (i.e. NDMP backups over the LAN to a media server, and then out via SAN to tape storage).

 

Can anyone else help?

J_H_Is_gone
Level 6

I agree with sdw303

 

after you had the drives replaced, did you remove them from netbackup and readd them so they show the correct serial number...

Omar_Villa
Level 6
Employee

Match the 3 DB's for the drives, tpconfig, tpautoconf and vmglob they need to match Serial Number, Drive Name and Path if they dont match you will need to update them once this is done you'll be fine, if they do match then you have a hardware problem or something with your medias.

 

 

regards

Alexander_Harri
Level 4

The NDMP drive is attached to a filer for 3-way backups (the robot itself is controlled by the master/media server). The other drives use a SCSI cable connected to the master/media server (one attached to the same server s. 

 

I've made sure that the s/n's, etc match in netbackup and on the actual drive (and the filer for that drive).

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear (I was on hold with Symantec at the time).

 

We replaced one of the drives today and recreated it in netbackup (known good drive). It's working fine now.

 

2 of the drives were created yesterday and aren't working yet.

 

I think I'll try re-creating the other 2 drives when the test job is done.. 

Omar_Villa
Level 6
Employee
Have you check for any IPC hanged job? that can be an issue.

Alexander_Harri
Level 4

What's an IPC job? How would I find one (none show up when I run top or ps -A)?

 

The NDMP attached drive seems to have been fixed by re-creating it. The other one wasn't.

 

Alexander Harris 

Omar_Villa
Level 6
Employee

The ipcs command writes to the standard output information about active interprocess communication facilities. If you do not specify any flags, the ipcs command writes information in a short form about currently active message queues, shared memory segments, semaphores, remote queues, and local queue headers.

 

commands:

netbackup stop

ipcs -qa: list process that still are running
ipcrm -q <id number: stops hanged process>
Regards

Alexander_Harri
Level 4

Hello,

 

It doesn't look like there are any (correct me if i am wrong).

 

Before stopping netbackup:

 

------ Shared Memory Segments --------key shmid owner perms bytes nattch status 0x00000000 0 root 644 72 2 0x00000000 32769 root 644 16384 2 0x00000000 65538 root 644 280 2 0x4d4e5251 110526467 root 644 330752 2 0x55315352 110559236 root 666 4096 2 0x44525354 110592005 root 644 632832 4 0x53494152 110624774 root 644 1024 1 0x00005643 109641735 root 666 1024 1 0x00005654 109674504 root 666 1024 1 ------ Semaphore Arrays --------key semid owner perms nsems 0x000000a7 0 root 600 1 0x00000000 19431425 root 777 250 0xc9e03647 19464194 root 644 3 0x00000000 19529731 root 777 250 0x4453314d 20054020 root 600 1 0x55535253 20086789 root 666 1 0x00005653 19628038 root 666 1 0x00000000 19759111 root 777 250 0x00006312 622600 root 666 1 ------ Message Queues --------key msqid owner perms used-bytes messages 0x4c544952 786432 root 666 0 0 0x52455151 589825 root 600 0 0 0x52455051 622594 root 600 0 0

 After stopping the netbackup services:

 

------ Shared Memory Segments --------key shmid owner perms bytes nattch status 0x00000000 0 root 644 72 2 0x00000000 32769 root 644 16384 2 0x00000000 65538 root 644 280 2 ------ Semaphore Arrays --------key semid owner perms nsems 0x000000a7 0 root 600 1 0x00006312 622600 root 666 1 ------ Message Queues --------key msqid owner perms used-bytes messages