Tape device locking limitations

ARCserveIT locks all SCSI tape devices that you select for ARCserveIT to use. Because of this, your tape devices are unavailable for use by backup commands such as tar(1) or cpio(1), even if the devices are not currently being used for backup or restore operations by ARCserveIT.

Depending on the number of tape devices available on your system, there are two possible workarounds to this situation.

• If your system contains a single SCSI tape drive, you can temporarily unlock the device from any ARCserveIT manager window:

  1. Open any ARCserveIT manager window.

  2. From the File menu, select Media services -> Stop Service.

  3. When you are finished using the tape drive, restart ARCserveIT by selecting Media Services -> Stop Service.

• If your system contains multiple tape drives, you can unlock one or more individual devices by editing the /opt/ARCserveIT/asmedia.cfg file and commenting out the desired devices in the Device Table section. Specific instructions on how to make these changes are documented within the tapesvr.cfg file.