Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!sco!rosso
From: rosso@sco.COM (Ross Oliver)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: SCO & Archive Tape Drives
Summary: What do do about "System too busy for efficient tape use"
Keywords: tape drive,system too busy!
Message-ID: <2183@viscous.sco.COM>
Date: 31 Mar 89 20:52:23 GMT
References: <261@boake2.UUCP>
Reply-To: uunet!rosso (Ross Oliver)
Organization: SCO Technical Support
Lines: 18

In article <261@boake2.UUCP> scott@boake2.UUCP (Scott Boake) writes:
>
>sometimes (most?) when you go to open the /dev/rct0 device, it comes back
>with a "system to busy for efficient tape use" error message.  Have you 
>seen this?

When the tape driver opens the device, it tries to grab a large
number of _contiguous_ disk buffers (128K worth, I think).  If there
is or has been recently a large amount of disk activity, the driver
may not be able to get as many buffers as it wants.  That is the cause
of the error message.  You can usually clear it up by doing a "sync,"
which write to disk and release all of the dirty but unallocated disk
buffers.  If that still doesn't work, you may need more disk buffers.
Use configure(ADM) to increase the MAXBUF parameter.

Ross Oliver
Software Support Engineer
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.