ATTO UL5 and 10.4.10

[Mayoff]

Hi,

 

I found the following on the ATTO website. We have also had several customer calls on this issue:

 

http://www.attotech.com/troublemac.html

Quote:

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Since the release of OS 10.4.10, there have been a number of reported problems accessing tape drives with EMC Retrospect and other backup programs. These usually materialize as system freezes or backups hang. This has been reported mostly with LTO3 and Sony AIT-4 or AIT-5 tape drives, but may happen with other types also. Until a solution is found, please revert to OS 10.4.8 or 10.4.9.

 

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[TheTroupe]

We are seeing lesser issues with UL3D cards and 10.4.10. Bad header found error or worst no device found.

 

Only change is updateing to 10.4.10

 

We will revert to 10.4.9 and leave it there for the next few years.

 

Fred

[rhwalker]

Quote:

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We are seeing lesser issues with UL3D cards and 10.4.10. Bad header found error or worst no device found.

 

Only change is updateing to 10.4.10

 

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with what hardware? (just so the rest of us can be watchful)

[SimonHobson]

Hmm, sound like my problem as well :-(

 

Hardware is Atto UL4D in Blue&White G3 with Tandberg SLR100 drive.

[Mayoff]

I have heard that ATTO has a new driver to workaround the bug in 10.4.10 with ATTO UL5 cards. Check the ATTO link above for new details

[rhwalker]

Looks like it is a new driver AND new firmware, for UL4D, UL4S, UL5D, UL5D Low Profile. Links:

 

ATTO Driver v. 4.20 for Mac OS X

ATTO Firmware 9/5/2007 for UL4D, UL4S, UL5D, UL5D Low Profile

 

Russ

[williamhsman]

I have this on going issue with this and it keeps going backwards and forward between reto and ATTO. The sever is on 10.4.10 but with the issues of the ATTO I had to wait for the new driver and once that is installed Retrospect seems to work fine for the first 10mins or so but then the server crashes.

 

I checked the crash logs and it reports that smbd crashed which has no connection to this at all as far as I can tell. After a reboot I left the server as it is and everything is working fine as normal with the server but as soon as retrospect starts up give it 10mins and bam beach ball of death.

[Mayoff]

I would recommend contacting ATTO again. It could be that the "fixes" implemented by ATTO are not working for all configurations. Otherwise try 10.4.9

[mjeffreys]

Is there anything new on this issue?

 

I recently purchased an HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960 LTO3 tape drive after the Ecrix VXA drive I had been using for many years finally died. I am using two UL5D cards, one for a 4-drive RAID and the other for the new Ultrium drive. I have installed the ATTO 4.20 Driver and reflashed the firmware on both cards with the FlashBundle from 20070905.

 

Still, once Retrospect starts to backup the 1st file (from the RAID drive), I get a "205 (lost access to storage media)" error.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks,

 

- MLJ

[rhwalker]

Quote:

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Any suggestions?

 

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I suggest giving ATTO support a call. I found them to be very good the one time I had to call them on our UL4D.

http://www.attotech.com/techsupt.html

 

But they may be in the same bind that you are - it's Apple's bug, and ATTO tried to work around it, appears not too well. The Mac OS 10.4.11 update is rumored to be on the verge of release, we can only hope that will fix it. I've had an open RADAR issue (acknowledged bug) with 10.4.x for almost 3 years now.

 

ATTO's suggestion, prior to their workaround, was to revert to Mac OS 10.4.9, which didn't have this issue. Yes, I feel your pain.

 

russ

[mjeffreys]

I contacted ATTO just after posting my message, and they were able to solve the problem. Here is what they said:

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Open the ATTO Configuration Tool. If you do not have the Configuration Tool, please download it from our website. On the left side, click the arrow in front of HOSTS, then LOCALHOSTS, then the ExpressPCIxxxx SCSI adapter. You should now see Channel 1 and Channel 2. Click on the correct SCSI channel. If you are unsure of which channel your device is connected to, please look at the back panel. It should be labeled Channel 1 and Channel 2 accordingly. In the main window, you should now see "Common NVRAM Configuration". Scroll down to "SCSI Target NVRAM Configuration" and change the "Specified Target" to the SCSI ID of your tape device.

 

Once you have changed the Specified Target, change "Tag Command Queuing" to DISABLED, and change the "Sync Rate" to 160 DT. Click the COMMIT button. If you have a tape library, you should have more than one SCSI ID, and you will need to repeat this process for each said SCSI ID. Remember to click the COMMIT button after each SCSI ID.

 

After all of the ID's have been modified accordingly, restart your computer. Upon restarting, you should be able to see your devices in the Configuration Tool, as well as System Profiler.

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I did all that and now my backups are working fine, except that I discovered that if you have scripted Retrospect to backup automatically and you log out of your user account, it doesn't have access to external SCSI hard drives. That sort of makes sense -- there's no way around that, I suppose?

 

Thanks,

 

- MLJ