Strange tape problem

From: McCracken, Denise <Denise.McCracken_at_misyshealthcare.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 12:07:24 -0700

  We have a DEC3000, 4.0f pk7 machine with a strange tape problem. A backup
is taking twice as many tapes as it used to, so it appears that their tape
drive is not using compression. It is a TLZ06 drive, and this began
happening right after a system crash.

  In /var/adm/messages, we get the following, repeated many times:

Aug 4 06:28:16 lab0 vmunix: [0/5/0] ctape_ioctl: unmapped scsi density code
(0x
13) - DDR entry needed

  
  In the startup, we get

               x00000004 DEC 3000 - M550
MESSAGE error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        Alpha boot: available memory from
                                         _0x15de000 to 0x12000000
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        Digital UNIX V4.0F (Rev. 1229); Wed
                                         _Jul 30 16:08:23 MDT 2003
                                        physical memory = 288.00 megabytes.
                                        available memory = 266.92 megabytes.
                                        using 1098 buffers containing 8.57
                                         _megabytes of memory
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        emx: dynamic addressing enabled
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        error reading PVD block
                                        DDR: WARNING: Unable to obtain
Device
                                         _Information Database
                                             Unable to open file /etc/ddr.db
                                        DDR: WARNING: Basic Defaults will be
                                         _used.
                                        tc0 at nexus
                                        scc0 at tc0 slot 7


        I found one other instance of this problem on the web, same exact
messages, that turned out to be a bad CD drive, so we took the system down
and had the HP tech unplug it. Bringing the system up again, we got the
same messages. HP told us to rebuilt the kernel so we did, and we have the
same startup message.

        I have also tried recompiling the ddr database and checking the file
size against one on another similar machine. It is the same.

        I had thought that a PVD block was part of an iso9660 filesystem.
Does it mean something else with Tru64?

        Anyone have any ideas where to go on troubleshooting this, before I
have to call HP again? We're going to reboot to fix another problem in a
few hours, so I would like to try anything else we need to do before reboot.

thanks

-denise
Received on Mon Aug 04 2003 - 19:05:50 NZST