AmyJ Posted September 20, 2002 Report Share Posted September 20, 2002 ADAPTEC SCSI CARDS Ongoing testing by DantzLab has found that Adaptec SCSI cards do not function in a consistent, reliable manner when used with Mac OS X. These findings are supported by hundreds of reports from customers who have experienced problems with tape and CD-RW devices attached to Adaptec SCSI cards. The problem, which affects all versions of Mac OS X including 10.2 (Jaguar), is not application specific. Rather, incorrect data is passed by the SCSI card to and from any program communicating with a SCSI device. The result may simply be an inaccessible device, or worse, data corruption can occur. Adaptec has been made aware of this problem, and they are working on a solution. However, until this issue is resolved, Dantz can no longer recommend or support Adaptec SCSI adapters for use with Mac OS X. These adapters include the Adaptec 2906, 2930 (which is also the $49 Ultra SCSI card option with the Power Mac G4), 29160, 29160N, and 39160 SCSI controllers. When Adaptec releases new software drivers that provide reliable functionality in Mac OS X, we will reinstate support for Adaptec SCSI adapters at that time. INITIO SCSI CARDS Initio has released new beta software drivers that provide reliable device access in Mac OS X 10.2 with their mid- and high-level cards, the Miles and Miles U2W. Dantz is working with Initio engineers to help them provide Mac OS X support for their entry-level card, the INI-9090U "Miles Bluenote." CURRENTLY SUPPORTED SCSI CARDS FOR MAC OS X 10.2 The following SCSI adapter cards are supported for use with Retrospect and Mac OS X: ATTO ExpressPCI PSC ATTO ExpressPCI DC ATTO ExpressPCI UL3S ATTO ExpressPCI UL3D Initio INI-9100UW "Miles" Initio INI-A100U2W "Miles U2W" For more on Retrospect-supported SCSI cards in Mac OS X, please see the following Dantz Knowledgebase article. http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=27381 Amy Dantz Technical Support Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drishmung Posted September 21, 2002 Report Share Posted September 21, 2002 I'd like to that Dantz for posting this information. I imagine there has been a lot of work done by them to come up with such a clear statement. This may not be good news for those with an affected card, but it is far better to know for sure what the culprit is, rather than get sidetracked by the drive, SCSI cables, termination, media or Retrospect. Now, I have the INI-9090U "Miles Bluenote." and while it seems to work well enough, the console entries reading Sep 21 14:27:02 localhost mach_kernel: 940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense940SCSI ReqSense have been a concern. Now I know. However, I am very pleased to see the statement Dantz is working with Initio engineers to help them provide Mac OS X support for their entry-level card, the INI-9090U "Miles Bluenote." and look forward with anticipation to an updated driver soon. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveW928 Posted October 10, 2002 Report Share Posted October 10, 2002 Hi Amy, In your post, you listed the ' ATTO ExpressPCI PSC' as a working card under 10.2. I would like to buy one of these and just wanted to be sure... to be more exact ATTO Tech part #: EPCI-PSC-000 (Express PCI PSC) The reason I'm looking for clearification, is that the page you reference in your message (and also the page everyone not reading the forum will look at) only has the following listed as compatible: ATTO Tech EPCI-UL3S EPCI-UL3D EPCI-DC EPCI-DCd If there is now a better list of compatible cards, could you please have someone update the web site? Thanks, -Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riki Posted October 14, 2002 Report Share Posted October 14, 2002 After upgrading my G4 (AGP Graphics) to OSX several months ago, my SONY SDT 7000 DAT tape drive (purchased long ago from APS) was no longer recognized by the computer (ADAPTEC SCSI card). I have kept up with all the Retrospect 5 updates. All contacted including Apple, Dantz, Adaptec, APS feined ingorance. I finally replaced the SCSI card with a low cost Orange Micro Grappler SCSI 930U card. This card has worked fine since then. I upgraded to Jaguar when I saw that Orange Micro had a new Jaguar driver for the card within a week of the Jaguar release. All is still fine with the tape access and backups! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted October 14, 2002 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2002 At this time, we have not completed testing with other cards, and are not currently supporting them for use with OS X. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dfodel Posted October 15, 2002 Report Share Posted October 15, 2002 I am using an ATTO UL3S in my XServe and while it seemed to work fine (more or less) I am having a recurring problem after having installed the 10.2.1 update and the Retro 5.0.236 updater. Originally I would lose access to the device (a Quantum Super DLT 220 tape drive) after a successful back-up, which would require a re-boot (on occasion, not always). I would eject the tape and put in that days tape ( i swap tapes daily) and Retro would tell me that it could not see the device, even after re-scanning from within retro. Like I said, a re-boot of my server would typically fix this, but was not all that convenient as it is a heavily used production file server. Now, however, after the aforementioned updaters have been applied, even after several re-boots, I still can't get Retro to recognize the drive. The annoying request for "admin" log-in has ceased, and automatic execution actually works (yay), but for the life of me, I can't get it to see the drive... I am using the updated driver (ver. 3.0.104). So far I have missed 2 scheduled back-ups due to this problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seika7 Posted October 17, 2002 Report Share Posted October 17, 2002 Ditto dfodel's post. I'm having the exact same problem with the same hardware and software, except I'm using an HP Surestore Ultrium 215 (LTO) drive. My disconnection problems were random before upgrading to Jaguar Server and would corrupt my catalog files (forcing a new set and erasure of the tape). After updating to the latest version of Mac OS X (10.2.1) and Retrospect (5.0.236 with driver update 3.0.104), Retrospect can't make it through the night without dropping the connection. The tape drive always reports a happy Ready light and active termination, and Apple System Profiler always recognizes both the ATTO UL3S card and the HP tape drive. After a reboot of the Xserve, Retrospect also sees the card and drive perfectly. This nice situation can last for hours during the day when I'm watching it. Every night for the last week (I upgraded everything last Thursday afternoon), Retrospect has been consistently losing the connection sometime after I leave for the day. It drops the connection during a backup, and it drops the connection when the tape is out of the drive. It dropped the connection after I told it to not run the backup server script, and it continues to drop the connection even after I removed the Retro.Config and Retro.Icons files as per my $70 phone call to Dantz. After it drops the connection, the Configure -> Devices window reports "No backup devices found." Device Status reports "SCSI-A:1" on a line by itself where it should continue to describe the drive under normal conditions. Ejecting the tape and reloading, turning the drive off and back on, and quitting and restarting Retrospect have no effect. At this stage (where it is right now), both the drive and Apple System Profiler report all systems go. The only way to get Retrospect to recognize the drive again is the kick everyone off the file server and reboot the Xserve. In the Operations Log, you can see access errors (205 and 102) scattered everywhere for the last two months since I installed the Xserve, sometimes with days of clean backups in between. Most of the times that it lost access during a nightly backup, however, it corrupted the catalog data forcing me to erase the tape or use a new tape and create a new backup catalog. Very few of the successful backups over the last 2 months are actually usable now. Where the Operations Log probably gets more interesting for you guys is on 10/1/2002 where it describes the addresses of bad backup set headers, such as . . . Trouble reading: “1-02/08/20 B” (1844536), error 102 (trouble communicating) Bad backup set header found (0x7c4c1700 at 118,320,689). Trouble reading: “1-02/08/20 B” (1844536), error 205 (lost access to storage medium) . . . And later on 10/8/2002 when it reports: Trouble reading: “2-02/08/20 B” (31320), error 206 (drive reported a failure: dirty heads, bad media, etc.) (about a hundred times) followed by: Additional error information for device "Ultrium LTO DC" [0:1], Sense > f0 00 03 00 00 00 05 0e 00 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 50 8f (HP |Ultrium 1-SCSI |N23D) On 10/14, after quite some time troubleshooting the situation over the phone with Dantz, we decided to enable SCSI logging. Some examples from the SCSI log (near the end of the Operations Log) are: cdrDidLoad: CdrClass class version 0x501 loaded DeviceAccess: Opened Device HP|Ultrium 1-SCSI|N23D SCSI SCSI-A:1: 6:28:15 PM Read <1a 00 0f 00 1c 00> [28 bytes] [28 bytes] > 1b 00 10 08 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0f 0e c0 80 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 SCSI SCSI-A:1: 6:28:15 PM Command <00 00 00 00 00 00> Sense > 70 00 02 00 00 00 00 0e 00 00 00 00 3a 00 00 00 2c 6b SCSI SCSI-A:1: (<00> failed 4 more times) Sense > 70 00 02 00 00 00 00 0e 00 00 00 00 04 01 00 00 2c 6c SCSI SCSI-A:1: (<00> failed 53 more times) Sense > 70 00 06 00 00 00 00 0e 00 00 00 00 28 00 00 00 2c 6d SCSI SCSI-A:1: (<00> failed 0 more times) (but this time it passed) DeviceAccess: stucFinished: transaction failed, error 0xffffdcd8 The console log from Mac OS X shows the following regarding a UNIX process called 'aped': aped[212]: Attach failed: 5, for AEServer[524] aped[212]: Attach failed: 5, for Retrospect[545] The Dantz support site says the following about 205 and 102 errors (at http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=26589 ): "Error 205 (lost access to storage media) usually indicates the SCSI bus was reset during a backup causing Retrospect to lose contact with the tape disk or CD. This usually points to a SCSI problem and may be accompanied by an error 102 (trouble communicating). "If error 102 accompanies error 205 see “SCSI Issues” in the Retrospect Users Guide. If error 102 does not accompany error 205 and SCSI communication problems have been ruled out the next step is to check for media failure on the source volume. "Some hard drives reset the SCSI bus when they sense they are experiencing a media failure. Try testing the hard drive with the software that was originally used to format it." The 206 error, also in the Operations Log, suggests a drive error, bad media, or media that was in use when the drive lost power. Dantz recommends ( http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=26684 ) using a cleaning tape in the drive and erasing or using a new tape. I was using a new tape at the time and I read from HP that I am not supposed to use the HP cleaning tape unless the drive specifically requested it. My drive has never shown anything but the ready light. Should I use the cleaning tape anyway? The tape drive is only 2 months old, and I have only used fresh HP tapes with it. The SCSI cable seems to be of very high quality and came with the drive. None of the pins are damaged and there are no kinks in it. The ATTO UL3S Ultra 160 SCSI card has the latest firmware available from Apple. (Since it is an OEM Apple card, Apple supplies the firmware, not ATTO, and they have seen no reason to update it yet. The Xserve has the latest driver for the card. I need to back up about 2 GB of new/changed files each night, and have been unable to backup for the last week. When I try a manual backup, it fails eventually and corrupts the catalog. Please help! Thanks, Bryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted October 17, 2002 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2002 dfodel: Check the Apple System Profiler > Devices and Volumes - is the drive seen here? If so, please try a clean installation of Retrospect (uninstall / reboot / reinstall). You indicated that you have consistently had issues with Retrospect not seeing the drive. When this happens, have you checked the Apple System Profiler? It would be helpful to know if the drive is seen here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted October 17, 2002 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2002 Bryan - As a test to further help isolate the problem, can you try the drive attached to another computer and run a few backups? Please post results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seika7 Posted October 17, 2002 Report Share Posted October 17, 2002 Will do Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seika7 Posted October 23, 2002 Report Share Posted October 23, 2002 I took the drive to my reseller and they plugged it into a PC running XP Professional with an Ultra 160 card. He usually has a couple tape drives hooked up to it, but it wouldn't recognize my drive with his cable. After almost an hour of fiddling, he gave up and said he'd need to reconfigure his BIOS. We took it over to a new G4 running Mac OS X Server with a retail dual channel ATTO Ultra 160 card (UL3D). The drive was instantly recognized and Apple System Profiler showed the same exact thing as it did on my Xserve (everything OK). This was using one of the new ATTO cables from the retail box--we didn't bother checking with my HP cable. Nothing had apparently changed and they were closing, but he lent me the ATTO cable anyway, just to see if it would help. It did! After plugging in the ATTO (very stiff) 3' cable, I've had 3 solid backups on a fresh tape with no loss of access to the drive. Comparing this with random failures under 10.1.5 and a maximum uptime of 3 hours under 10.2.1, I'm praying it will stay this way. HP called back this morning to check on me and is sending me a new cable. I just tried to continue the backup on my 'B' tape, but it didn't like the catalog (inconsistent with the tape). Repairing didn't work either, stopping about 30 MB into the repair process with a 205 (lost access) error. Configure -> Devices still showed the drive. Figuring it was corrupted during the chaos, I erased it and am now backing up to it with my fingers crossed. Best wishes, Bryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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