Ouch !

Presumably it is only a very intermittent error, since we currently backup 
80,000+ files a night on a combined store/slt, and we have only had this 
error once.   Also, in our case we did not get the "Program terminated in an 
error state. (CIERR 976)" -- both the backup job and devinfo in the other 
job hung.  Actually, the "hang" part bothered us a lot more than an abort 
would have.

We had good old fashioned tape errors a few days before, and again a few 
days later, but nothing since the operator gave the drive a good cleaning, 
so I was *guessing* a cause along those lines.

FWIW, the number of files in our backups increases steadily, mostly because 
we archive several hundred reports a month.  82,000 Friday night,  65,000 in 
09/20078, 37000 in 11/2003, etc.

So, is there some point at which adding approx 800+ files a month gets us 
into REAL trouble ??
(they're in separate groups, so a limit on files in a group should never be 
an issue).


Dave (RELEASE: C.75.00 MPE/iX HP31900 C.45.05 USER VERSION: C.75.05) Powell, 
MMfab


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "cathlene mcrae" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "HP3000 List" <[log in to unmask]>; "Dave Powell" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 09:17
Subject: Re: backup hang and devinfo hang


Problem is a know issue, with sysgen and store.  If the number of files for 
the
store is > 32k files.

Cathlene Mc Rae
HP SR. Response Center Engineer
[log in to unmask]



When creating a combined SLT/STORE tape, the Store process aborts with:


SENDMAIL TO SYSGEN FROM STORE FAILED. (S/R 1741)
        **error** failed to receive status from STORE--
Can't make tape.
        **error** Tape command failed.
SYSGEN tape is NO GOOD!
sysgen> e




Program terminated in an error state. (CIERR 976)
REMAINDER OF JOB FLUSHED.

SENDMAIL TO SYSGEN FROM STORE FAILED. (S/R 1741)

This causes SYSGEN to mark the tape as bad and unreadable.

SOLUTION:
From original document 4701321604 (originally seen on 5.5):

Cause:

One of the fields in the sendmail record that is passed between SYSGEN and
STORE is a 16-bit field that is used to contain the number of files that 
were
successfully stored. If the number of files that are successfully stored is
greater than 32767, the process will fail and the tape will be marked as bad 
.

Temporary Solution:

The only temporary workaround is to store less than 32K files when creating 
a
combined SLT/STORE tape.

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