This appendix describes the most common problems that you
might encounter while installing and starting
SCO ARCserve/Open from Cheyenne and provides
possible solutions.
Most of the problems that you may encounter,
especially when using SCSI host adapters,
are hardware-related.
Two important points to consider when tracking down
hardware problems are:
Make sure your hardware is functional. This includes the
host adapter card, the cables, and the tape drive itself.
If you can, test your hardware by connecting it to a system
that you know works.
Make sure the hardware is configured properly.
This includes setting the proper switches on the controller card
(according to the manufacturer's instructions)
and making sure the SCSI bus is terminated properly
at both ends.
Problem
Solution
During system startup, I get
a SCSI bus selection timeout error.
This message is normal during system startup. The software
scans the SCSI bus to look for tape drives and
changers. Some host adapter drivers report a NOTICE
or an error if there is no device attached to a particular
SCSI ID while scanning for devices.
If you see these messages scrolling by after the system is
already up, immediately run astop. This condition
usually occurs when someone has switched off a drive,
disconnected a drive, or there is a loose SCSI cable.
NOTE:
It is a good idea to run astop before disconnecting
SCSI devices.
When running the SCO ARCserve/Open front-end,
my windows exceed the screen size.
SCO ARCserve/Open's screens are designed
to display optimally on systems with a VGA
card capable of 256 colors and with a resolution of
at least 800x600.
If you want to change the graphics resolution, make sure
your VGA card supports the above resolution,
then run SCOadmin video configuration manager.
I've installed SCO ARCserve/Open,
but I'm having trouble seeing my tape drive(s).
Make sure that all cards, cables, and devices are connected
properly. If you installed a new card in your system before
installing SCO ARCserve/Open, make sure it is
seated properly in its slot. If that does not work, try
putting the card in a different slot.
Type astatus to see if the SCO ARCserve/Open
tapesvr daemon is running.
If you have multiple host adapter cards installed
in your system, make sure your drive is connected
to the first one.
Make sure your SCSI bus is terminated properly.
There must be two sets of terminating resistors, one at the
beginning of the chain and one at the end. If you only have
one drive connected to your machine, then you have two
devices on the SCSI bus; the host adapter card
and the tape drive. Both the host adapter card and the
tape drive should be terminated.
Make sure each SCSI device in the chain has a unique
ID. If you have two tape drives attached to the
SCSI bus, each with a SCSI ID of 2,
chances are neither device will work. Set each drive to a
unique SCSI ID.
Make sure all the tape drives are turned on. Sometimes if
you forget to turn on one device in a chain, the others will
behave erratically.
Make sure the jumper settings on your adapter board are
correct. Check the documentation that came with the board
to make sure the jumpers are set correctly for use with your
hardware.
Replace the cables you are using with ones you know are good.
If the problem goes away, you know you had a bad cable.
The SCO ARCserve/Open database is getting very large.
The ideal solution is to make sure your filesystem has plenty
of free space.
If you have tapes that are out of date, or that you no longer
need, format them and re-use them. When you format a tape,
the references to the files and sessions on that tape are
removed from the database.
You can calculate how much disk space you will need for the
SCO ARCserve/Open database based on how much data
you regularly back up.
The information that SCO ARCserve/Open records
about each file that is backed up requires about 80 bytes
of space in the SCO ARCserve/Open database.
If you back up 100,000 files every week, and re-use the same
tapes each time you do it, you need about 8 MB
of disk space (80x100,000) for the database.
Another option is to relocate the database to a filesystem
with more available disk space. See
``Relocating the SCO ARCserve/Open database''
for information on how to do this.