ITEM: DD9119L
sbwrite: Invalid argument
Question:
Env:
AIX 4.2.1
RISC 390
Tape 8mm 5gb 7208-011
sysback 3.3.3.17 and sysback.rte.4.1.1.7
Problem:
Customer set the block size of the tape drive to 0
And ran the sysback command with a buffer size of 1024k = 1mb
This problem can be reproduced with both version 3 and ver 4
of sysback.
-------------------------------------------------------
sysback.obj 3.3.3.17 test
-------------------------------------------------------
sysback -xf /dev/rmt0 -b1024
Rewinding /dev/rmt0 ...
Generating volume group information ..
Changing tape block size to 512 ..
Placing boot image on tape ..
bosboot: Boot image is 5991 512 byte blocks.
Placing install image on tape ..
Placing Sysback programs on tape ..
Repositioning tape ..
-------------------------------------
Backing up the rootvg volume group
-------------------------------------
Generating file list ..
Calculating file sizes ..
Backing up Volume Group rootvg to device /dev/rmt0.1
Start date is Mon Jul 7 07:49:23 1997
User is root at mars
ESTIMATED PROGRESS
-------------+--------------------+------------------+--------------
% Complete | Elapsed Time | Megabytes | Kbytes/Sec
-------------+--------------------+------------------+--------------
0 | 0 minutes of 0 | 0 of 74 | N/A
sbwrite: Unable to write data to device /dev/rmt0.1!
sbwrite: Invalid argument
Backup of rootvg volume group failed!
----------------------------------------------
Same test, but with ver 4.1.1.7 of sysback.rte
----------------------------------------------
sysback -xf /dev/rmt0 -b1024
Rewinding /dev/rmt0 ...
Changing tape block size to 512 ..
Placing boot image on tape ..
bosboot: Boot image is 5994 512 byte blocks.
Placing install image on tape ..
Placing Sysback programs on tape ..
Repositioning tape ..
Generating LVM information ..
Generating table of contents ..
Generating file list ..
Pre-processing / filesystem ..
Pre-processing /usr filesystem ..
Pre-processing /tmp filesystem ..
Pre-processing /var filesystem ..
Writing table of contents ..
sbwrite: Unable to write data to device /dev/rmt0.1!
sbwrite: Invalid argument
The only place I can see being a issue, is with the 3590, 3570, and
3490 tape drives. By default those tape drives have a block size of 0
and many customer's like to use a large buffer size with those drives.
I don't know if this problem is related to a problem with the sysback
code (sbwrite) or with the tape drive device driver code.
CLOSED by tj on 07/07/97 10:17:
Although I agree this could be a problem, it has nothing to do
with Sysback and not something I can fix. If you do a "dd" with
1024k you'll have the same problem. The drives have a 1 MB
buffer but apparently can
handle just less than that. It works with 1023k! Because the
3570, etc, have, I believe, larger than 1 MB buffers, this may
not be a problem at all for those drives anyway.You can report
this as a tape drive or driver problem, but they're likely to
return it as a hardware limitation.
Support Line: sbwrite: Invalid argument ITEM: DD9119L
Dated: July 1997 Category: N/A
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