From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Oct 24 21:00:19 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA03340 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Sat, 24 Oct 1998 21:00:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA03331 for ; Sat, 24 Oct 1998 21:00:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id OAA04801; Sun, 25 Oct 1998 14:29:39 +1030 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) id OAA17000; Sun, 25 Oct 1998 14:29:34 +1030 (CST) Message-ID: <19981025142934.H16609@freebie.lemis.com> Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 14:29:34 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: Harlan Stenn Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: debugger("bt742a")? References: <19981025133104.G16609@freebie.lemis.com> <8487.909285649@brown.pfcs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1i In-Reply-To: <8487.909285649@brown.pfcs.com>; from Harlan Stenn on Sat, Oct 24, 1998 at 11:20:49PM -0400 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Saturday, 24 October 1998 at 23:20:49 -0400, Harlan Stenn wrote: > Greg, > > The two 4-mm drives I have are Connor DDS-2 drives, and they're probably > about 2 years old. Neither gets a lot of use. I clean them more often > than the cleaning light comes on (which is usually after an older tape gets > read). You shouldn't overclean either. The cleaning tape is harsher on the heads than normal tapes. > Is it "worth" overhauling the DDS-2 drives? Depends on what you mean by "worth". The only time I ever had a DDS(-1) drive overhauled, it worked for about a week and then stopped again. Next time I'll get a guarantee. > I've avoided 8mm because I'm not fond of the wear caused by helical > scanning. DDS drives are helical scan too. Take a look through the slit. > If this is true, I figure my choices are: > > - Overhaul my existing drives > - get new 4mm drives > - get DLT drives (*Much* more expensive) Yes, *if* this is true. > If I could find a writable DVD drive I'd consider that as my backup medium. > CDRoms at 600M are just too small. > > Suggestions? I've done a lot of head-scratching myself. I'm just about to order two new Seagate DDS-2s with 2 year guarantees. > The "second" machine (ah controller and my primary amanda server) is > where I first noticed the problem. Lately, certain filesystems > refuse to be backed up and end up on the holding disk, and I cannot > amflush them to tape. I noticed a rare disk sector I/O problem, and > reformatted the disk. That's probably overkill. Don't you have bad sector remapping enabled? > Even so, when I would try to read or write a tape on this system, I > would frequently get a system SCSI lockup that required hitting the > reset button. This is when I tried reading the tape on the "first" > system (bt controller) and eventually discovered that I had to do > this from vt0 to see that the kernel was trapping to the debugger. > > > On the second machine (ah controller) I just get SCSI bus lockups, > but no debugger traps (and when this happens I can't use the vulcan > death grip to get in to the debugger). Hmmm. It could be a bug in the old SCSI driver, which was suffering from neglect. I'm seeing similar things myself. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message