SUMMARY: Exabyte Mammoth (8900) compression

Jim McVey (jmcvey@nhgri.nih.gov)
Tue, 24 Feb 1998 16:28:19 -0500 (EST)

Sorry for the delay...

Original question:

> Could someone please give me some advice on how to get compression
> working with the Exabyte Mammoth tape drive? I can't get the drive
> to go past 20G (should be 40G with compression).
>
> I'm running Solaris 2.5.1 Generic_103640-12 on an E3000. Backing up using
> Solstice Backup 5.0.1. The tape device is /dev/rmt/0cbn. Everything
> works fine, except for the compression.
>
> st.conf has the following:
>
> tape-config-list=
> "EXABYTE EXB-8900", "Exabyte 8mm EXB-8900", "EXBT-8MA";
> EXBT-8MA = 1,0x29,0,0x1de39,1,0x7f,0;

Several people recommended I not use the Berkeley device, so I changed it to
use /dev/rmt/0cn.

Applied Patch 103857-12.

Changed st.conf:

"EXABYTE EXB-8900", "Exabyte 8mm EXB-8900", "EXBT-8MA";
EXBT-8MA = 1,0x35,0,0x1ce39,1,0x27,0;

NOTE: The patch listed above will overwrite your st.conf file. Back up your
st.conf file before you install the patch.

I'm getting up to 27G per tape now. According to Sun and some of the responses
from the list, that's all that can be expected.

There was also a problem that I didn't mention before, where
"mt -f status /dev/rmt/0cn" returned "EXB-8500", even though st.conf
showed "EXB-8900". The patch fixed this problem as well.

Thanks to everyone for your help.
Charlie Mengler <charliem@anchorchips.com>
Joel Lee <jlee@thomas.com>
bbyoung@amoco.com (Brad Young )
David Beard <beard@abel.maths.adelaide.edu.au>
Aleksandar Milivojevic <alex@srce.hr>
whao@air.dec.state.ny.us
(sorry if I missed anyone)

and especially "Kevin Inscoe"<kevin.inscoe@cbis.com>, who answered a lot of my
questions and pointed me to the OS patch.

Jim

---
Jim McVey
NHGRI LAN Support
jmcvey@nhgri.nih.gov