cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 This is going to take quite a while to set up but I want to try to give all of the information. Windows 2003 Server (Latest Service Packs and Updates) Retrospect Multi Server 6.5 (with the security update...don't recall the . release) Exabyte VXA-2 Packetloader (Library and Tape Drive) SCSI Occasionally a tape gets "stuck" between the library and the tape drive so I pull the drive out and push the tape back in to the library and everything is good (this was the fix expressed to me by Exabyte support). This scenario happened last weekend and so I had to do this on Monday. When I reconnected the SCSI cable one of the pins got bent and I obviously didn't realize it until later. Not long after this the network performance began to degrade and eventually the server crashed, rebooted, crashed, rebooted, etc. I disconnected the SCSI cable and the server booted normally. The Microsoft Crash Analysis pointed to ASPI.SYS from Adaptec. I got a new SCSI cable and decided to see if it was just the faulty cable that caused the crash so I let the backup run that night. It ran over 3/4 of the way and then the server crashed again and hung. I disconnected the cable again (just to be sure) and rebooted it and everything was fine. I went to Adaptec's site and pulled down the updated ASPI drivers (the current version was 4.60). Every time I ran the update batch file it seemed to start the process but there wasn't anything after that. I checked the files and ASPI32.SYS was the only file that was updated. The aspichk utility showed this but also said that aspi was installed and working fine. Every time I tried a backup I would eventually get the 102 error. I searched this site and found that there was a retrospect version of aspichk on my server so I ran it and it stated that aspi was not installed correctly and that an older file was installed (it was actually the newer, I assume, 4.71.2). I ran the retro aspi install.exe (can't remember the exact filename) and it changed everything back to 4.60. The same error occured when attempting a backup and before it got to that point it would actually go through three or four tapes even if the first tape was the correct one, unloading and loading each. We manually copied the updated (4.71.2) wnaspi32.dll file to the directory (after renaming the old one) and ran the update batch and it actually ran and completed. aspichk confirmed the new version of aspi32.sys and wnaspi32.dll. I attempted a backup and the same thing occurred. Tried several tapes and eventually errored out with 102. I rebooted the server after each attempt at installing aspi. I even tried to change to NT Passthrough according to a knowledgebase article here but that option was not present. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as I am coming upon a week without a valid backup. Oh yeah, there is a firmware upgrade that was just released about a month ago for the tape drive and I will be upgrading that tomorrow. Thanks in advance, Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 8, 2006 Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 Is there a question here or just a narrative of what happened to you? I've never seen this with our Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u PacketLoader (SCSI) attached to our ATTO UL4D. Sounds like you've got a bad autoloader that needs adjustment. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 The long narrative was an attempt to give all of the pertinent information so that someone might be able to help me figure out what is wrong. The question is "does anyone have an idea what is wrong?" The autoloader was working fine until I reconnected the cable with the bent pin. Any idea how to adjust the autoloader? If I broke some forum rule by posting too much information I apologize but from my experience people that want to help usually prefer to have all of the information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 8, 2006 Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 Sorry you misunderstood my question as criticism. I just couldn't figure out what you wanted ideas about. No, you didn't break any rules. If that's the question, I can't for the life of me figure out how a bent pin (unless something shorted out) could have affected anything once it was corrected. It's an LVD SCSI interface. Without knowing which pin was bent, it's hard to analyze what could have been expected, but I would have expected bad data, bad transfers, all sorts of junk on the SCSI bus. But unless some driver's signal was shorted to a voltage, it shouldn't have blown anything up. And autoloader adjustment is mechanical. Just a caution about the drive firmware update. The jury is still out, but I'm not convinced it doesn't have some issues with some error recovery routines near BOT. It may have been a batch of bad Exabyte X-23 tapes this summer; or it may be the firmware. But the errors started concurrent with the firmware update of June 2006. I'm still gathering data. Using a different batch of tapes (all the tapes were new), I haven't seen any errors in about 8 weeks. So it may have been the tapes. Your problem sounds like a misadjusted autoloader, though. Exabyte has had some quality problems lately; you may be aware that they were just sold to Tandberg Data. But once you get a good unit that works, they keep working. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 Nah, that's cool. I just wasn't sure. This autoloader was purchased around June of 04 so unless they just crap out after a couple of years I would think it'd be OK. And it seems odd that it would coincide with the bad cable causing the blue screen/crash. I guess I'll stay away from the firmware for now. I thought it just came out in November though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 8, 2006 Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 The current firmware for the VXA-2 is 210E (06/14/2006) The VXA-320 (the generation after the VXA-2) is V13205 (09/01/2006) The packetloader firmware is V1A10D (02/06/2006), and corrects a number of insertion problems. That might be what you need. There's a minor bug with the packetloader firmware - it doesn't show the new drive firmware version until you power cycle the packetloader - it only loads drive version for the front panel LCD at power up. I turned in a bug report about a year ago. russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 Cool, thanks. I'll take a look at that. Thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 I thought that I had installed the packetloader firmware several months ago...I know this is a stupid question but how do I check to see which version is installed? Oh yeah, and the update that came out in November was the VXA Tool. I thought it was the actual firmware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 I figured out the FW version. My Library FW version is V1A105 so it seems that I downloaded the update but never installed it. I'll give that a try tonight. I also found out where to change to NT Passthrough so maybe that will help...dunno. I'll try to update this post tomorrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 8, 2006 Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 For us, I just look on the Ethernet remote admin page (we have the ethernet interface). But it can also be done using the Exabyte "libtool" (note that there is also a system utility by that name). Here's how to do it on a Mac; Windows results will be similar (except no "Terminal" program): (1) get the Exabyte libtool (see Software Tools): Exabyte tools (2) extract it into some folder, navigate there by Terminal (3) run the libtool in the current directory: ./libtool -i changer1 (don't ask me where the "changer1" comes from - that's what the documentation says to use; it's not a device in /dev). Here is sample output: Code: mail:~/Documents/Exabyte/packetloader firmware admin$ ./libtool -i changer1 libTool V1.62 - © 2002-2004 Exabyte Corp. changer1 - Device recognised as Exabyte PacketLoader 1U changer1 - Vendor : EXABYTE changer1 - Product ID: VXA 1x10 1U changer1 - Serial no : 000086007471 changer1 - Firmware : A10D changer1 - Bootcode : V1AB08 051404 changer1 - Ethernet : V10E0A 110504 changer1 - Slots : 10 [Elements 1 - 10 ] changer1 - Drives : 1 [Elements 82 - 82 ] changer1 - IP config : Automatic from DHCP changer1 - IP Address: 192.168.0.12 changer1 - IP Netmask: 0.0.0.0 changer1 - IP Gateway: 0.0.0.0 Done The "vxatool" does similar things for the drive. Hope this helps, Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 I did figure out how to find it. It states that its V1A105 so I'll try that after hours today and see if it takes care of it. I also enabled NT Passthrough...just in case it is the aspi issue. Thanks again for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 Well...I tried to update the packetloader firmware to V1A10D. I attempted ftp first and couldn't get it to work. I remember now that's why I never did the upgrade before. So I downloaded the LibTool and tried to update across SCSI. It found the library and I went to update. The drive LCD is saying Wait, Loading New Code. The progress bar wen to about 1/4 or 1/3 in about a second then stopped. There's now an hour glass and no progress for over 5 minutes. I have a feeling that I just fried my autoloader. Am I correct? I'm going to go home, eat dinner, drink heavily and probably lose some money playing poker then I'll check it tomorrow. If anyone knows of anything that I can try I would appreciate it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 Well the update errored out before I left so I guess I didn't fry it. My server did crash hard with a ton of Delayed write failures. I also noticed some errors on my RAID drives so maybe that's the issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 8, 2006 Report Share Posted December 8, 2006 I seem to recall it took a long time for the update to happen, perhaps 15 minutes. But surely there is some way to reset the thing to factory defaults and try again. I'd suggest giving Exabyte tech support a call, seeing what they suggest. I've only done the update via ftp through the ethernet admin interface, and the procedure is very strange. You might want to do the update in safe mode so that everything is quiet. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 9, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2006 It hung for quite a while then errored out and gave this error: Error Update Firmware: General Failure Write Buff: Sensekey=0x000, ASC=0x00, ASCQ=0x00 I'm really starting to think it's one of my RAID drives... I'm going to attempt a backup to disk just in case then...I dunno. Replace the drive and see what I can do I guess. Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Well, I finally tracked down the culprit. After realizing that the SCSI cable caused the original problem I searched for another cable and thought that I had found one. In my haste I did not thoroughly check the cable and it was not the correct connector. It "fit" so to speak but was the wrong type. I've since gotten the correct cable and it seems to be working fine. I'm still having the trouble with the tape getting stuck so I'll be updrading the firmware as soon as I get the chance. Thanks again for the help. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Quote: Just a caution about the drive firmware update. The jury is still out, but I'm not convinced it doesn't have some issues with some error recovery routines near BOT. It may have been a batch of bad Exabyte X-23 tapes this summer; or it may be the firmware. But the errors started concurrent with the firmware update of June 2006. I'm still gathering data. Using a different batch of tapes (all the tapes were new), I haven't seen any errors in about 8 weeks. So it may have been the tapes. Simply as an update, I have decided after extensive testing that the errors were due to a bad batch of tapes that we got this summer. Exabyte says the tapes are good (I sent them back for replacement, and they were returned), but that batch of tapes causes the errors, a newer batch of tapes does not. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmullins Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Cool, thank you very much for letting me know. And thanks again for the help. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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