Troubleshooting tape drives
Issue 3.3 February 2003 181
Rebuilding tape device drivers
As tape drives are added to and removed from a system, the device instance numbers can
get out of sequence with the number of tape drives. For example, if a system has two tape
drives, and one is removed, the system may accidentally try to use a tape drive that no
longer exists.
To reassign device instance numbers for tape devices:
1. Log in to the system as root.
2. Make sure that the target addresses for any SCSI tape drives are set correctly.
Typically, the internal tape drive is SCSI address 5, and an external tape drive is SCSI
address 4. If you change the SCSI address, you must turn the tape drive power off and
back on.
3. Insert the Solaris CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive.
4. After about 15 seconds, enter the following commands:
boot cdrom -sw
fsck -y /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0
mount /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 /a
devfsadm -vCc tape -r /a -p /a/etc/path_to_inst
This reassigns the device instance numbers for the tape devices.
5. Enter:
eject cdrom
6. Remove the Solaris CD-ROM.