Issues with an Exabyte 8200 Drive

Issues with an Exabyte 8200 Drive

[David L Kindred (Dave)]

Greetings

I have an older Exabyte 8200 tape drive connected to one my Linux boxes
(RH 7.2 2.4.9-31 Kernel).  The drive appears to work fine if I write a
tape on it and then read it back.

Unfortunately, I also have some older tapes written ON THAT DRIVE, on an
old SunOS system that is no longer operational.  I am unable to read
those tapes.

From /var/log/messages:

    kernel: st3: Incorrect block size.
    kernel: st3: Error 8 (sugg. bt 0x0, driver bt 0x0, host bt 0x0).

I strongly suspect a mismatch in block size, density, etc., to be the
cause of this, but no combination of options I have tried has helped.  I
have tried to make sense out of the mt and st man pages, but without
some idea as to what the various options should (or may) be set at I am
having no success.  In particular, I any attempt to use the mt stoptions
or related commands just makes things worse.

Anybody got any pointers on making this work?

-- 
David L. Kindred <mailto:d.kindred@telesciences.com>
Unix Systems & Network Administrator
Telesciences, Inc. <http://www.telesciences.com>
Support: <http://support.telesciences.com>
2000 Midlantic Drive, Suite 410, Mt. Laurel, NJ 08054
Tel: +1.856.866.1000 ext. 4184
Fax: +1.856.866.0185
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