IBM LTO6 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO4 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO2 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO3 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO5 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO1 Tape Drive
 
IBM LTO7 Tape Drive
 

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In this Document

Goal

Solution

Applies to:

Goal

 IBM LTO:  How to Retrieve IBM LTO Drive Dumps from an IBM AIX Host

Solution

When a customer has Oracle/STK IBM LTO tape drives connected to an AIX host, the AIX host will automatically retrieve a drive dump from the drive when it has a failure.

The AIX host uses the SCSI sense data from the IBM LTO drive to determine if it should retrieve the dump from the drive or not when there is an error.  The AIX device driver for the IBM LTO drives is what actually retrieves the dump from the drive.

When the AIX device driver detects that a dump should be retrieved, the device driver will retrieve the dump and will save it in the AIX host's /var/adm/ras directory.

These dumps will typically have a name similar to the following:  "Atape.rmtx.dump1".  Where "x" equals the device rmt number assigned to the drive.

The very first dump retrieved and saved for a given rmt device will end in a "1".  If there is already a dump in the /var/adm/ras directory that ends in a "1" then it will name the dump with a "2" and so on.  Because of this, one might need to select the latest dump in the directory for the failing drive if there are multiple dump files for that specific drive.

If you have a customer that is running Oracle/STK IBM LTO drives on their AIX host, ask them to see if there is a dump in the /var/adm/ras directory for the drive that is seeing issues prior to using the ITDT tool to retrieve a drive dump.

Note:  These dump files can be opened just fine when uploaded to SPLAT or with the IBM ITDT Tool for those L2 engineers that can analyze the IBM LTO dumps.

Contact Oracle Tape Technical Support to acquire the ITDT tool.

Download the required tool version from the Tape Support website: IBM ITDT tools are listed under the "Reference" -> "Tape Product Tools" -> "OEM Drives" section on TapeSupport (https://tapesupport.us.oracle.com/Procedures/tools_main.php#OEM Drives).

Note: For the Windows versions of IBM ITDT tools, MOS won't allow you to post an ".exe" or ".msi" file so we had to add a ".txt" file extension to the end of them so please make sure the customer is aware that after they download the file from MOS they will have to take the ".txt" file extension off.

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