Disable Polling in HP-UX Hosts

1. Check if the latest “Stape” driver and the SCSI subsystem patch is installed on the
system.

2. Make sure that the access to the device files with a “rewind on close” is not possible.
In the Kernel we have to set new tunable Kernel parameter:

St_san_safe=1

NOTE: If Customer is running HP-UX 11.31 or above versions please refer to the news
letter from the link for more assistance Click here for HPUXNEWSI329A1 - st_san_safe
and HP-UX B.11.31

When enabled, the tunable forces the stape driver to fail all opens to device files with out
no-rewind-on-close option with the errnoEINVAL. The Stape driver will also log an
entry into the syslog like the following:

vmunix: SCSI TAPE: dev = 0xcd002000

Failed open - st_san_safe enabled

The command to verify this parameter is:

# kmtune | grep san

st_san_safe 1

3. Removing the device files with the “rewind on close”option prevents access to the
device files. Be aware that this is not needed if St_san_safe is set, but can be useful until
the system can be rebooted.

In the directory /dev/rmt, remove all the device files without the “n” option

Rm ‘ls | grep –v n’

Note: While rebooting the system will execute a ‘insf –e’ and reinstall all the device files
for the stape driver and also “rewind on close”.

4. Make sure that all devices configured in Data Protector are updated since only “no-
rewind on close” device files will work, other wise you may receive the following
message:

[Major] From: BMA@system.hp.com "TAPE1" Time: 05/06/02

08:24:09
[90:54] /dev/rmt/0m
Can not open device ([22] Invalid argument)

5. It is highly recommended to stop any tape monitoring software running on the SAN.
Some other backup applications like CA Arcserve can also corrupt the DP headers.