HP DDS/DAT tape drives UNIX, Linux and OpenVMS configuration guide (DW049-90930, May 2010)

6 Linux (kernel 2.6x) servers and

workstations

NOTE:

USB, SCSI and SAS drives are supported on Linux kernel 2.6.

Ensure the correct HBA and driver are installed

NOTE:

HP recommends using the HP driver for your HP branded SAS Host Bus Adapter. HP Host Bus Adapter

drivers enable unique features in HP SAS tape drives that improve their compatibility and data

reliability. The native Host Bus Adapter driver (which may be included with your Linux operating

system) may not take full advantage of these features.

To download and install the latest driver for an HP branded HBA, visit www.hp.com.

Visit the HP Tape Compatibility website for details of supported Linux OS versions and SAS HBA

controllers: http://www.hp.com/products1/storage/compatibility/tapebackup/index.html

Check the driver modules are loaded in the kernel

In order to communicate with a tape device, the operating system needs to have drivers loaded for

both the tape drive and the host bus adaptor. Ensure that both are available as either loadable modules

(for example, usable with insmod and visible with lsmod) or are statically built into your kernel.

NOTE:

To add drivers to the statically-built kernel you need the Linux source code available on disk and

knowledge of how to use the kernel building tools that ship with various Linux distributions. This should

not be attempted by novice users.

The following guidelines assume the use of loadable driver modules.

Run the lsmod command to list all driver modules currently loaded in the kernel. Check whether the

st driver for tape is listed and also whether the relevant HBA driver is listed.

lsmod

UNIX, Linux and OpenVMS configuration guide 29