Compatability of AIT between HP-UX and Solaris

[Peter Chiu]

Hi,

I need to transfer some data written on an HP UX 10.20 machine
onto a Solaris V7 machine, both machines have an AIT-2 tape drive attached.

The AIT-2 tape drives are identical as far as I can see (Sony SDX-500C).

When I use a typical tar command (tar -cvf /dev/rmt/1mn) to copy some data
onto an AIT-2 tape on the HP, I can read the data back on the HP okay.

But if I tried to read the tape on the Solaris box, I always get "read IO
errors".
I tried a number of options using various device modes, but not much luck.

I have the similar problem when writing some data on Solaris and tried to
read it back on the HP.

Has anyone come across similar problems, or know of a way to get round this?

Thanks.

Regards,
Peter Chiu

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Space Science & Technology Department
Chilton
Didcot
Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
Phone: +44-(0)1235-446699
Fax: +44-(0)1235-445848
Email: P.C...@rl.ac.uk

[brol...@my-deja.com]

Before driving myself too crazy, I usually try the byte-swapped tape
device. Often times, systems use byte ordering opposite from one
another.

On the HP, try reading the Solaris-created tape as follows: tar -tvf
/dev/rmt/0mb (or 1mb, 2mb ... as needed for your tape drive).

There should be similar byte swapped devices on Solaris, but the Solaris
workstations I have at work have no tape drives. Hopefully, someone
else knows more about Solaris tape drive /dev devices will repond. I'd
like to know that, also.

If that fails, there's always the 'dd' trick to getting the bytes
swapped, like this:

dd if=/dev/tape swab | tar tvf -

where /dev/tape is the /dev file for the tape drive. The swab option of
dd will swap the byte order for you.

-Mike

In article <8f6f03$1b...@newton.cc.rl.ac.uk>,

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[Jean-Louis HAMEL]

Peter Chiu a écrit :
>
> Hi,

>
> When I use a typical tar command (tar -cvf /dev/rmt/1mn) to copy some data
> onto an AIT-2 tape on the HP, I can read the data back on the HP okay.
>
> But if I tried to read the tape on the Solaris box, I always get "read IO
> errors".
> I tried a number of options using various device modes, but not much luck.
>
> I have the similar problem when writing some data on Solaris and tried to
> read it back on the HP.
>
> Has anyone come across similar problems, or know of a way to get round this?
>
>

Yes!
The tar of HP is not a standard tar. Install and use the gnu tar
instead.
JLH

[Peter Chiu]

Thanks, Mike, for your reply.

I have not tried your recipe but I did try to get another
tape drive (dds3) mounted on the HP, did a tar, and
I can read the tar file using another dds3 tape drive
on the Sun Solaris box.

This suggests the device drivers on AIT-2 are
incompatible between the HP-UX and the SUN Solaris.

I tried to contact HP and Sun but their responses are
very slow at the moment...

Regards,
Peter Chiu

<brol...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:8f6mc3$b84$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...

> Before driving myself too crazy, I usually try the byte-swapped tape
> device. Often times, systems use byte ordering opposite from one
> another.
>
> On the HP, try reading the Solaris-created tape as follows: tar -tvf
> /dev/rmt/0mb (or 1mb, 2mb ... as needed for your tape drive).
>
> There should be similar byte swapped devices on Solaris, but the Solaris
> workstations I have at work have no tape drives. Hopefully, someone
> else knows more about Solaris tape drive /dev devices will repond. I'd
> like to know that, also.
>
> If that fails, there's always the 'dd' trick to getting the bytes
> swapped, like this:
>
> dd if=/dev/tape swab | tar tvf -
>
> where /dev/tape is the /dev file for the tape drive. The swab option of
> dd will swap the byte order for you.
>
> -Mike
>
> In article <8f6f03$1b...@newton.cc.rl.ac.uk>,
> "Peter Chiu" <P.C...@rl.ac.uk> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I need to transfer some data written on an HP UX 10.20 machine
> > onto a Solaris V7 machine, both machines have an AIT-2 tape drive
> attached.
> >
> > The AIT-2 tape drives are identical as far as I can see (Sony
> SDX-500C).
> >

> > When I use a typical tar command (tar -cvf /dev/rmt/1mn) to copy some
> data
> > onto an AIT-2 tape on the HP, I can read the data back on the HP
> okay.
> >
> > But if I tried to read the tape on the Solaris box, I always get "read
> IO
> > errors".
> > I tried a number of options using various device modes, but not much
> luck.
> >
> > I have the similar problem when writing some data on Solaris and tried
> to
> > read it back on the HP.
> >
> > Has anyone come across similar problems, or know of a way to get round
> this?
> >

[brol...@my-deja.com]

In article <8f98sf$u...@newton.cc.rl.ac.uk>,

"Peter Chiu" <P.C...@rl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Thanks, Mike, for your reply.
>
> I have not tried your recipe but I did try to get another
> tape drive (dds3) mounted on the HP, did a tar, and
> I can read the tar file using another dds3 tape drive
> on the Sun Solaris box.
>
> This suggests the device drivers on AIT-2 are
> incompatible between the HP-UX and the SUN Solaris.
>
> I tried to contact HP and Sun but their responses are
> very slow at the moment...
>

Peter,

A response to a similar query in the HP-UX forum reveals a flaw in the
advice that I gave you. I mistook the 'b' devices on the HP system for
byte swapping, in a way similar to the 's' (swapped) and 'ns'
(non-swapped) devices SGI provides in Irix. HP's 'b' devices mean
'Berkeley implementation' for the tape driver. It does not mean 'byte
swapped' as I originally thought.

However, the person who offered me this correction did confirm that on
HP-UX systems, and on most Unix systems for that matter, the 'dd'
method, dd if=/dev/tape swab | tar tvf - will swap the bytes for you.
Give that a try while waiting for your support calls to tell you
basically the same thing.

Sorry for feeding you the original bad info. My bad.

-Mike

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <8fbmjj$udh$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <brol...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <8f98sf$u...@newton.cc.rl.ac.uk>,
> "Peter Chiu" <P.C...@rl.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Thanks, Mike, for your reply.

>A response to a similar query in the HP-UX forum reveals a flaw in the

>advice that I gave you. I mistook the 'b' devices on the HP system for
>byte swapping, in a way similar to the 's' (swapped) and 'ns'
>(non-swapped) devices SGI provides in Irix. HP's 'b' devices mean
>'Berkeley implementation' for the tape driver. It does not mean 'byte
>swapped' as I originally thought.
>
>However, the person who offered me this correction did confirm that on
>HP-UX systems, and on most Unix systems for that matter, the 'dd'
>method, dd if=/dev/tape swab | tar tvf - will swap the bytes for you.
>Give that a try while waiting for your support calls to tell you
>basically the same thing.

If you use star from ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/star/alpha/

you will not need to swab as star autodetects it and corrects the problem.

--
EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
j...@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
schi...@fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix

[Peter Chiu]

Thanks to all who replied to my query posted last week.

I have now found the solution to the problem.

It turns out that the firmware used on the AIT-2 drives on the HP
is different from that on the three other AIT-2 tape drives on the Sun.

Once updated to the same level, these drives will write data readable
on the other platform.

Also for info, tar, DD, co all work without any special command
switches on the HP and the Sun.

Regards,
Peter Chiu

"Joerg Schilling" <j...@cs.tu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:8fboev$n1p$1...@news.cs.tu-berlin.de...