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HP-UX 11.x Operating Environments - tar Commands Hang issue |
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It was noticed that backups using tar were failing. There were many pending tar commands in the ps –ef output. The tar command hang could be replicated with this simple tar statement:
$ tar cf - / | tar tvf -
The resulting process could not be killed.
The hang would not occur at the same file, but usually just in vg00 filesystems. No errors or complaints in the syslog.log or dmesg.
SOLUTION:
Check the following:
that current tar patches are installed
that ioscan sees the device
the syslog.log and dmesg for any complaints
try writing to the drive with another command
Tried to backup using another utility, like an Ignite backup (make_tape_recovery command) to see if the same hang occurs with pax (pax is the utility that Ignite makes use of) and to test writing to the tape drive.
It was found that pax was already running and it looked like an Ignite hung from an earlier date, which was about the same time as the backup failures...
It is suspected that the hang was on the tape hardware, resulting in the commands not responding. In order to release the hung processes (tar and pax) the server had to be re-booted; there is no other way to kill a hung process.
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