So, we recently swapped 3 faulty tape drives on our TS3310. The library is connected through FC, so there’s no need for the box to be booted off for us to remove the broken drives, and install the new one. Please be informed that the guide is only applicable for IBM tape drive using lin_tape, on RHEL box. Since RHEL won’t automatically register the new drives, you need to either reboot the box, or:
Stop the lin_taped daemon
What we basically must do is to unload and reload the lin_tape module. To unload, we need to stop any service that use lin_tape. To stop the lin_taped daemon, do the following:
/usr/bin/lin_taped stop
Unload and reload the lin_tape module from the kernel
To unload the lin_tape module from the kernel, do the following:
modprobe -r lin_tape
..and to reload:
modprobe lin_tape
Check the serial numbers and the drives’ status and
To make sure that new drives are registered, compare the new drives serial number to your documentation:
[root@hqdwhbe1 ~]# cat /proc/scsi/IBMtape lin_tape version: 1.10.0 lin_tape major number: 250 Attached Tape Devices: Number model SN HBA FO Path 0 ULT3580-TD4 1310283865 qla2xxx NA 1 ULT3580-TD4 1310279631 qla2xxx NA 2 ULT3580-TD4 1310135028 qla2xxx NA 3 ULT3580-TD4 1310136063 qla2xxx NA 4 ULT3580-TD4 1310232424 qla2xxx NA 5 ULT3580-TD4 1310227740 qla2xxx NA
Notice the “attached number” and the new serial numbers, in my case, those are 1310283865 and 1310279631, so it will be registered as /dev/IBMtape0 and /dev/IBMtape1 respectively. To see if the drives are accessible on OS level, do the following:
mt -f /dev/IBMtape0 status
If RHEL can access the drives, the output should be similar to this:
[root@hqdwhbe1 ~]# mt -f /dev/IBMtape0 status SCSI 2 tape drive: File number=-1, block number=-1, partition=0. Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x46 (no translation). Soft error count since last status=0 General status bits on (40000): DR_OPEN
Start the lin_tape daemon
To start the lin_tape daemon, do the following:
/usr/bin/lin_taped start
…And we’re done. The next we should do is to test whether your backup system (TSM, BackupExec) is working with the new drive