Troubleshooting
Problem
In a library sharing environment, it might be necessary to diagnose reserve-conflict errors. When the IBM tape device driver is used in a Windows environment, it can be useful to trace the device driver to identify the process ID that is doing the reserve.
Symptom
A library manager that runs on AIX mounts a tape for a storage device that runs on Windows. The tape is written to and later on, when the library manager tries to dismount the tape, a drive-busy error is returned. For example :
ANR0408I Session nnn started for server MYAGENT (Tcp/Ip) for library sharing. (SESSION: nnn)
ANR8779E Unable to open drive /dev/rmtx, error number= 16. (SESSION: nnn)
ANR8311E An I/O error occurred while accessing drive MYDRIVE (/dev/rmtx) for SETMODE operation,
errno = 9, rc = 1. (SESSION: nnn)
ANR8355E I/O error reading label for volume MYVOL in drive MYDRIVE (/dev/rmtx). (SESSION: nnn)
ANR8779E Unable to open drive /dev/rmtx, error number= 16. (SESSION: nnn)
ANR8469E Dismount of LTO volume MYVOL from drive MYDRIVE (/dev/rmtx) in library MYLIB failed.
(SESSION: nnn)
Cause
"tape library hardware vendor support", is a bit confusing to me. Does this mean to contact or work with the service team for the tape library?
Diagnosing The Problem
In this type of situation, first contact the support team for the tape library. Investigate with the hardware vendor support to identify which host has the reserve on the tape drive. After the host is identified, then you must identify which process on the host has the reserve on the drive. If the identified host runs the IBM tape device driver on Windows, a trace of the IBM tape device driver can help to identify the process that is doing the reserve on the Windows machine.
Resolving The Problem
See the IBM Tape Device Drivers Installation and User's Guide manual for instructions on how to install the debug version of the device driver. To trace the device driver, you must also run the DebugView tool.
After you start the DebugView tool, you must configure the events. Select all of the following items from the Capture menu:
Capture Win32
Capture Global Win32
Capture Kernel
Enable Verbose Kernel output
Pass-Through
Capture Events
For example :
Then, enable trace timestamps by selecting the following items from the menu :
Options > Clock Time
Options > Show Milliseconds
It might also be useful to log the output to a file. Click File > Log to File. For example :
After the trace is enabled and the reserve conflict is recreated, look for the FltDispatchCreate trace entry in the device driver trace. For example :
IBMTpFlt: ENT: 933->934: filter.c, 526: FltDispatchCreate: pDeviceObject 0x05ccb550 - 0x18fc, pIrp 0x05785b00, Version 6.2.3.4x64 Built Dec 28 2012, 12:41:03
IBMTpFlt: DBG: defines.h, 322: STATUS_STRUCT_ALLOCATED found irp 0x05785b00 at index 2
The 0x18fc value in the FltDispatchCreate sample trace entry corresponds to the hexadecimal form of the ID of the process that has the reserve on the tape drive. Hexdecimal value 0x18fc corresponds to decimal value 6396. You can then use Windows Task Manager, or the "pslist -t" command that is included in the pstools, to identify the process name that is tied to the process ID decimal value. For example :
C:\tools>pslist -t 6396
pslist v1.28 - Sysinternals PsList
Copyright ⌐ 2000-2004 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals
Process information for TSM06:
Name Pid Pri Thd Hnd VM WS Priv
itdt-ge 6396 8 31 386 765124 79388 82028
The example output shows that process 6396 is associated with the itdt-ge process, which is the IBM Tape Diagnostic graphical edition. In this example, the IBM Tape Diagnostic graphical edition software has the reserve on the drive. This software had the tape drive opened. Trying to access the same tape drive from a different window (while it is still opened by the IBM Tape Diagnostic graphical edition GUI), results in an error. For example :
C:\IBM ITDT tool>itdt -f \\.\tape0 inquiry
Open failed: Access is denied
Exit with code: 5
Related Information
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Document Information
Modified date:
17 June 2018
UID
swg21639072