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up vote 2 down vote favorite

When I try to take backup of data more than 1MB in a tape (LTO3) using tar command it showing me the following error.

xyz@localhost# tar -cvf /dev/nst0 file1.tar
file1.tar
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot write: Input/output error
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Output of mt -f /dev/st0 status:

SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x44 (LTO-3).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN

Output of dmesg:

st0: Sense Key : Aborted Command [current]
st0: Add. Sense: Information unit iuCRC error detected

and

st0: <<vendor>> ASC=0xff ASCQ=0xffASC=0xff <<vendor>> ASCQ=0xff
Errata on LSI53C1030 occurredsc->req_bufflen=0x2800, xfer_cnt=0x00,difftransfer= 0x1400
st0: Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
Info fld=0x1400

Output of cat /proc/scsi/scsi:

Attached devices:
Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: NECVMWar Model: VMware IDE CDR10 Rev: 1.00
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 05
Host: scsi2 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: VMware Model: Virtual disk Rev: 1.0
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi2 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00
Vendor: HP Model: Ultrium 3-SCSI Rev: G54W
Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
Host: scsi2 Channel: 00 Id: 02 Lun: 00
Vendor: HP Model: 1x8 autoloader Rev: 1.50
Type: Medium Changer ANSI SCSI revision: 03
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1 Answer 1

up vote 3 down vote

From this line in the log:

st0: Sense Key : Medium Error [current]

it looks like either the tape is damaged or dirty, or the drive head is dirty or misaligned or damaged. First thing to try is to run a cleaning tape through the drive, then try writing to that tape again. If you get media errors again, try writing to a known good tape, or to a brand new tape. Do not put tapes with valuable data into the drive until you've found a solution - the drive might damage any tape put into it.

This drive appears to be part of a library. The library may provide additional information it has retrieved from the drive about the error (in particular, whether it thinks it was a drive error or a tape error). The info should be visible on the front panel and/or over the network.

share|improve this answer
    
thanks For your reply. after clean the tape still i am facing the same issue..!!!! –  user54478 Apr 28 '14 at 7:10
    
now i am using new tape but again facing the same issue. Till 128KB its working fine but after that its showing input output error. –  user54478 May 21 '14 at 5:10
    
I'd like to see exactly how much gets written before the error occurs. tar doesn't give that kind of info. Instead of tar cvf /dev/nst0 file, can you instead run tar cvf - file | dd of=/dev/nst0 bs=64k. See whether it fails on the first 64KB record or whether it writes one or more successfully. Also, does your library's front panel show any errors on the drive? –  Mark Plotnick May 21 '14 at 5:23
    
does your library's front panel show any errors on the drive? NO, but i can write file of size 15k in tape and also able to retirieve. –  user54478 May 21 '14 at 6:20
    
output of the following command tar cvf - xyz.tar.gz | dd of=/dev/nst0 bs=64k xyz.tar.gz dd: writing `/dev/nst0': Input/output error 3+0 records in 2+0 records out 131072 bytes (131 kB) copied, 2.87548 s, 45.6 kB/s –  user54478 May 21 '14 at 6:56

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