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Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:18:03 -0600
From: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
To: David Bear <David.Bear@asu.edu>
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Subject: Re: scsi tape errors
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In the last episode (Mar 16), David Bear said:
> I am getting error messages that don't make much sense. They would
> lead me to beleive that the tape is bad... I guess. Yet, I have a
> hard time beleiving that the two out of four tapes is bad.
> 
> issuing an 'mt erase' it get an input/output error.
> 
> below are the kernel messages.
> 
> could two tapes suddenly just become 'bad'?
> 
> Since these are ait tapes and have a 64k ram buffer, I'm wondering if
> there may be some bad data there and if there is a way to clear it...
> 
> The tape unit is a sony sdx300c.  I've updated it to the latest
> firmware. Its attached to an adaptec 2940wide.

Is it possible that erasing an AIT tape takes more than 4 minutes? 
That's how long the cam layer will wait for an erase command to
complete.  Try adding

options	SA_ERASE_TIMEOUT=10*60

and rebuilding your kernel.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@allantgroup.com