The loader does not show up in Configure-> Devices

[mngantung]

Hi there:

 

I do not know why there is no loader drop down list when I click Configure->Device to show all my tapes. It only shows the current tape being mount with the eject button on the side. As a result, my backup does not run properly every night because it is looking for a missing tape.

 

I have another backup device which runs fine every night since it recognizes all the tapes from the loader.

 

I have restarted my server (on OSX) with no luck. Any helps would be really appreciated. Thank you!

 

PS: Retrospect 5.0

 

--

Michael

[kazeeks]

Retrospect 5 is *extremely* finicky with it's loader support. I run a dozen various qualstar loaders here and each one required a slightly different setup under Retro 5. The biggest hurdle was discovering the proper SCSI id's. Retro 5 only recognizes loaders if the loader and drive is set to certain specific scsi id's. I assume the correct answer is to set the same id's that dantz QA used to qualify a loader/device. Of course, Retro does not immediately help you in that dept. One trick you can do is turn on SCSI logging in the secret prefs (option-click the prefs button). Then when you rescan the devices, the log will spew forth with tons of scsi info; sometimes it says "drive found at scsi id x, expect drive at scsi id y" or something like that. I've used that to config my loaders and then it worked fine. For example, my loader is id 2 and the drive is id 5, because the log showed me that. if either id changes, retro 5 no longer understands.

 

this behavior has been slightly improved under retro 6, but oftentimes the drive shows up _outside_ of the loader in the list, and i have to insert a tape or trigger the IO port before retro understands that the drive is in the loader. I don't know why retro 6 does that, but once it moves the drive inside the loader, it stays there until reboot.