Networker not seeing 2nd and 3rd tape drives

Question

Greetings, hoping somebody can suggest some things for me to try here.
I'm filling in for our backup admin' and ran into a problem with my tape library.
Our configuration is:
- Linux RH ES4 server running Networker 7.4.3 Network Edition
- ADIC Scalar 100 tape library with 3 LTO-2 drives and 36 slots
- we also use an AX100i d2d target (iscsi)

What happened was I opened the Scalar front door to swap out some tapes and then the fun started. The library didn't seem to respond properly to me trying to re-inventory or label new tapes.
I power cycled the tape library and the server a couple of times.
I can see all three tape drives via the inquire' command on my server but Networker just sees one drive associated with my 'autochanger'.
I can work with that single drive /dev/nst0 but it limits my ability to stage from my disk targets to tape as I only have one tape drive available now. I tired to go in and administer my 'autochanger' to tell it has 3 tapes drives by adding /dev/nst1 and /dev/nst2 but it seems to tell me that in addition to changing the config to 3 drives and 3 devices I also need to change some value for 'loaded volumes; should be 3' but I can't seem to find a setting or field to match.
I've run 'nsrjb -EHvv' and 'nsrjb -EI' but nsrjb -v just sees /dev/nst0 as a tape drive.

Any help appreciated.

Hari5 · Accepted Answer

Ok ... The first thing is that you should not open the front door of your tape libary to move tapes in and out of the library. There are access ports to do this and Networker allows you to move tapes to the access ports from the slots inside and vice versa. If you find that you have to open the front door for some reason, shutdown networker before doing this and restart networker once you have closed the door and the library has reinitialised itself.

In your current scenario, I gather that your tape library is not responding to networker properly and that only one of the three drives are configured in NW. Is that correct?

The solution is two fold. Just power-cycling the library does not help in this situation. In fact, if you are going to power-cycle the library, I'd say you would need to reboot the backup server as well. Please ensure that the backup server is rebooted only after the attached tape library is power-cycled.

If you are still unable to use the tape library or the tape drives after the reboot, you might need to delete your autochanger resource in NW, delete the tape drive configuration and configure the tape library from scratch.

oldschooler · Answer

Thanks for the reply.This tape library only has a single mail slot so I tend to do that if I can and I always have much better results as you say.I'll take your advice on shutting down networker before doing that next time.1 drive works, correct.I did runt he inquire cmd again yesterday and foudn now it was not working so I must have power cycled things in the wrong order.I'l powef cycle the library, wiat for it to finish initializing and then come back to the online state, and then reboot the server.Let me see where that gets me.

oldschooler · Answer

ok my inquire command reports all the drives now plus some other SCSI disks I didn't include here.
# inquire
scsidev@0.1.0:IBM ULTRIUM-TD2 5AT0|Tape, /dev/nst0
S/N: 1110169143
ATNN=IBM ULTRIUM-TD2 1110169143
scsidev@0.1.1:ADIC Scalar 100 6.10|Autochanger (Jukebox), /dev/sg1
S/N: ADIC_1_9U0054629
scsidev@0.2.0:IBM ULTRIUM-TD2 5AT0|Tape, /dev/nst1
S/N: 1110227114
ATNN=IBM ULTRIUM-TD2 1110227114
scsidev@0.3.0:IBM ULTRIUM-TD2 5AT0|Tape, /dev/nst2
S/N: 1110059836
ATNN=IBM ULTRIUM-TD2 1110059836

So would I just delete my autochanger called 'jukebox' and 'delete my tape drives also?. Do I run jb_config or something afterwards? I'm a little green on how to re-setup the tape library.
One related question the nwadmin program is depreciated on the newer Networker releases? I can run it on a unix server running and older 7.2.1 nsrexecd but is it advisable? Using that nwadmin I can see all 3 drives but /dev/nst0 is the only drive associated with the jukebox. Using my windows program it just sees nst0.

oldschooler · Answer

- deleted the autochanger- ran jbconfig to reconfigure- shutdown and restarted networker- ran an nsrjb -EHv and then nsrjb -Ivand I think we are back in business.

oldschooler · Answer

Forgot to say this post was answered or closed.

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Networker not seeing 2nd and 3rd tape drives

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