[ale] tape backup problems -- help

[Alan Bowman]

James,
  I apologize for the delay in replying.  I've been a busy bob lately..

I must admit that I'm not at all familiar with your particular tape
drive, and not really familiar with ide tape drives in general.  But
looking at the error messages makes me wonder if you've got a controller
problem.  I say this because everytime I've seen I/O errors combined
with failure to rewind (or retension), the cause has been the system not
seeing the tape controller card.  What is often happening is that the
system is falling back on the default tape device, since what tar is
linked to doesn't exist (at least not in the systems eyes..)  And since
there's no physical device at that major/minor number, the backup bombs
out with a screenful of cryptic error messages. When you boot up the
box, does it see the tape drive?

  Where is your tape drive located? Is it on an ide controller, or is it
a slave device to something that is?  Try putting something else where
the tape drive is, and see if that device has the same kind of problems.
If yes, then the problem is where the tape drive is. If no, then the
problem is your tape drive.

 As an aside, how long has it been since this box has had a full power
off shutdown?  It sounds goofy, but I've seen that work wonders.

  I hope this is of some help.  Once you find out what the problem
actually is, I'd like to hear the result.

...alan