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I'm trying to use a M1500 tape library that is new to me. Whenever the SCSI bus enumerates (at BIOS load and when Linux is booting) the enumeration will hang until I turn off and back on the tape drive in the library. This is done by pushing buttons on the front of the device so I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but I assume it's just turning the power to the drive off and on.

I'm new to using SCSI, but this seems very odd. Is this a bad drive, am I doing something wrong?

P.S. I may have been unclear about the enumeration bit. After cycling the power, the drive does enumerate. It is not simply skipped.

The following two sets of information are taken from the front panel of the library.

Library Information:

Model:            ATL M1500
Code version:     Main code 12.0
Boot version:     Boot code 3.00
Serial number:    xxxx
SCSI board type:  LVD
SCSI ID:          1
SCSI vendor ID:   M4 DATA
SCSI product ID:  MagFile
SCSI product rev: 12.0
MAC address:      Not valid

Drive Information:

Drive 1:
 Drive type:      HP LTO 1
 SCSI ID:         2
 Serial number:   xxxx
 Code revision:   E32F
Drive 2:
 Not Present

1 Answer 1

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Make sure your SCSI bus is terminated. Generally, there should be an external terminator on the device at the end of the bus "outside" - your SCSI adapter is the other end of the bus, usually. In your case I'm guessing you're running a single bus, looking at it from the back of the library, the right tape drive chained to the left - the leftmost port needs to have a terminator.

Everything on a SCSI bus needs a unique ID (with that library you probably have 4, your controller card, your tape library controller, and the two tape drives), but it's unlikely you need to change any of that.

What kind of SCSI controller are you using? There's the issue of HVD ("differential") vs LVD SCSI and which version of the M1500 library you have and what your controller supports - so, what kind of controller do you have?

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  • I only have one of the two tape drives in the library (it only came with one) the library's ID is 1, the tape drive is 2, and I have terminated the bus. How do I determine the ID of the controller card?
    – CrazyCasta
    Feb 22, 2014 at 20:49
  • The controller shows as an "Adaptec AHA-3960D / AIC-7899A U160/m (rev 01)" (according to lspci).
    – CrazyCasta
    Feb 22, 2014 at 20:54
  • Also, I've updated the information above to show more details. The terminator I've been using is an HP 5183-2657 which says WIDE-SE SCSI WIDE-LVD SCSI (so I'm assuming it's for both).
    – CrazyCasta
    Feb 22, 2014 at 21:11
  • I'm going to assume it was the terminator because I just switched terminators and rechecked the connections and now everything works. I have no idea what's wrong with the other terminator, but at the moment I'm going to assume it's just bad.
    – CrazyCasta
    Feb 23, 2014 at 1:14
  • The controller is usually SCSI ID 7 and does not need changing... Feb 23, 2014 at 3:31

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