From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 20 07:31:38 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id HAA11384 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Wed, 20 Jan 1999 07:31:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from caladan.tdx.co.uk (caladan.tdx.co.uk [195.188.177.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA11372 for ; Wed, 20 Jan 1999 07:31:35 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kpielorz@tdx.co.uk) Received: from tdx.co.uk (lorca-tx.tdx.co.uk [195.188.177.242]) by caladan.tdx.co.uk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id PAA70398; Wed, 20 Jan 1999 15:29:34 GMT Message-ID: <36A5F65E.97BA13CC@tdx.co.uk> Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 15:29:34 +0000 From: Karl Pielorz Organization: TDX - The Digital eXchange X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Questions CC: Alexandre Oliva , John Hennessy , "amanda-users@amanda.org" , "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" Subject: Re: Amrecover error message deciphered. References: <199901201510.JAA04500@mail.netsys.hn> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG FreeBSD Questions wrote: > Jan 20 08:09:27 mail /kernel: st0(ahc0:1:0): ILLEGAL REQUEST asc:20,0 > Invalid command operation code > > I need to translate that message to human understandable language. > > Can someone point me to a place where I can find answers on this problem or > should I replace the tape drive, drivers, tapes, etc.? OK, I'm not an expert but here goes... Your software asked the SCSI system to ask the tape drive to do something (probably a 'standard' SCSI command) that the tape drive could not perform, either because it doens't support the command - or some of the parameters were unsupported... It could also be caused (I'd guess) by the command getting corrupted on it's way to your tape drive... Check (and double check) your termination, make sure the tape is good... You mention Amanda? - If you take a blank tape, put it in the drive and then do: tar cvf /dev/nrst0 /etc mt rewind tar tvf /dev/nrst0 Does it work? - The above should (unless I've done a typo) backup the etc. directory to tape, command the tape to rewind - and then test what it's written... (you can probably see what we're trying to do - prove the drive good or bad for 'basic' use). At a rough guess - I'd guess this might have something to do with 'density' codes (or block sizes - e.g. 'variable length blocks'), as I've run into problems before with either 'mt', or other software trying to set density codes that my old tape drive (now gone to a better place) didn't like... If it was me, I'd have to say the bottom one looks the more likely... Have a look at the man page for 'mt' and look at the blocksize / density options, see if you can set any of them - or get the drive to report anything back... Hopefully someone else who's had some more recent experience with this kind of problem might step in - if not, try moving the conversation to either the -SCSI or -hardware lists... Regards, Karl To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message