[Jim Curtis]

I followed your steps, and the Terminal replies:

dquote>

Don’t I have to enter some form of tapectl first?

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.6

[Jim Curtis]

If you mean tapectl c, I get this, the Help Menu:

JPC@2019-Mac-Pro ~ % tapectl c
tapectl [-V] [-v] [-f dev] arg [count]
Version 12.0
Devices are known by the names ntapeX where X is the device order number
starting with 0 and incrementing for each tape device found.
arg is one of:
display – displays available tape devices
status – display currrent drive status
header – read the first 4K of a tape and display on stdout
fsf [x] – forward space filemark (x = count; 1 is default)
Tape is positionready to write on the EOT side of
the filemark ready to read.
bsf [x] – back space filemark (like fsf, but backwards)
Tape is positioned on the EOT side of the previous
filemark ready to read
wfm [x] – write filemark (x = count; 1 is default)
seod – space to end of data for appends
erase – short erase a tape
lerase – long (secure) erase – takes hours!
load – load tape into drive
rewind – rewinds a tape
rewoff – rewind the tape and unload it
tell – report current logical tape block
seek x – seek to logical tape block ‘x’
setblk x – set drive block size to x (x is required, 0 = variable block)
alert – display TapeAlert information if available
unload – same as rewoff
unltfs – Unformat an LTFS volume returning it to use as a standard
data tape. Any LTFS data will be lost.
-f dev – device to access – (ntape0 is default)
-v – additional verbosity while working
-V – version and copyright information
JPC@2019-Mac-Pro ~ %

I’m sorry to be wasting your time.

I don’t think anybody is at home at Tolis. Maybe they have gone under. I wish I knew, because it’s been days since I asked for support, and I haven’t heard a thing from them.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.6

[Jim Curtis]

You cut a weekly TV show and only have a 6TB RAID?

You can erase your drive, and copy back from your backups, but then you’re at risk of your backups failing before you copy it back.

There are defrag utilities for 10.15, but the more full the drive is, the longer they take, and they’re kind of slow to begin with.

Any time you copy media, there’s a risk of corruption, and defragging copies your media from one location to another.

It’s more reassuring to me to use a copy program that verifies after copying. I use ChronoSync for copying from one disk to another, but it doesn’t do defragging. But, it does a nice job of only copying changes, which may be useful for the updating folders situation you described.

I’ve never defragged a RAID in 15 or so years, and haven’t had any issues related to fragmentation of which I’m aware.

As my first 8-drive RAID5 got older, I had two drives go bad in one week. That created a nail-biting situation, as what would happen if another drive went bad while the RAID was rebuilding? I’d lose all my data. That would happen.

So, I have two RAIDs, and I mirror my project folders every night, using ChronoSync.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.6

[Jim Curtis]

It returns

bru: [W130] warning – read error on first block: errno = 5, Input/output error
bru: [A121] load volume 1 – press ENTER to continue on device ‘ntape0’
bru: [Q120] (C)ontinue (N)ew device (Q)uit [default: C] >>

With the tape drive unloaded, or no tape in it. So, I loaded the tape, and pressed ENTER, and this was added the Terminal window, same as before:

bru: [W130] warning – read error on first block: errno = 5, Input/output error
bru: [A121] load volume 1 – press ENTER to continue on device ‘ntape0’
bru: [Q120] (C)ontinue (N)ew device (Q)uit [default: C] >>

I had ejected the tape and turned the drive off before doing this.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.6

[Jim Curtis]

Yes, and it’s really simple. Ever since Pr CC2019, I think, you can add an fx enable / disable button to your Program tab by clicking on the + sign at the bottom right of the tab, and drag the fx icon to your set of commands. That toggle will enable and disable ALL the effects in your Sequence.

I’m not sure if Exporting enables FX automatically. If it does, never mind.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.6

[Jim Curtis]

If you and your friend don’t know about this, it will change your life:

On System Preferences>Accessibility>Zoom, click the checkbox for “Use Scroll Gesture with Modifier Key to Zoom.” The default setting is the Control key.

Then, when you want to zoom in and magnify the screen, hold down Control and use your mouse wheel or finger on a Magic Mouse to scroll up, and the image will magnify centered on your mouse pointer location. Do the reverse to zoom back.

On a laptop without a mouse, there’s a key combo that does a similar thing. I think it’s Cmd-Opt-+ and Cmd-Opt–, but I’m going from memory and not on a laptop as I write this.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.6

[Jim Curtis]

Nothing happened when I entered
tapectl tell
It just reverted to the default prompt: JPC@2019-Mac-Pro ~ %

I tried adding the quotes to the path, and I got the same error.

I have power cycled the tape drive, and entered Control-C in the Terminal before re-entering:
bru -xvvvf ntape0 “/Volumes/SAS RAID/ANTHEM restore from LTO”

I suspect the issue is:
bru: [W130] warning – read error on first block: errno = 5, Input/output error
But, what that means is over my head.

I can input tapectl header and it will return the name of the tape, and the name of one of the folders. Does this tell you anything?

JPC@2019-Mac-Pro ~ % tapectl header
ntape0a875209d 0 058217117 20000 01234 0 12 1 1 0 0 08323 0 0ntape0mac-osx2016-11-08 ANTHEM 2016 03DarwinJims-Mac15.6.0Darwin Kx86_64*** BRU BACKUP DATA *** Info: TOLIS Group, Inc. http://www.tolisgroup.com/usr/local/bin/bru -c -m -vvvvvvvvv -j -O -A -QB -f ntape0 -QX -L 2016-11-08 ANTHEM 2016 03 -4000-5362/9884da94 1 058217117 20000 02345 0 12 1 1 1 0 08323 0 41ed 2 1000003 0 22 0 0 05820f4a8581b429a581b429a 200 21 057891a5158217117% JPC@2019-Mac-Pro ~ %

I appreciate your help.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.5

[Jim Curtis]

THANK YOU, JAMES. I tried what you suggested.

I determined my device is ntape0 by entering: tapectl display

Here’s what I’m entering for the restore to line:

bru -xvvvf ntape0 Volumes/SAS RAID/ANTHEM restore from LTO

My RAID is named “SAS RAID”, the restore to folder is at the top level, named “ANTHEM restore from LTO” Does my file path look right?

I’m getting this error:

bru: [W130] warning – read error on first block: errno = 60, Operation timed out
bru: [A121] load volume 1 – press ENTER to continue on device ‘ntape0’
bru: [Q120] (C)ontinue (N)ew device (Q)uit [default: C] >>

When I input C, then press Enter, it just repeats the error.

I get the same error if I delete “Volumes/” from my file path in the restore to line.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.5

[Jim Curtis]

I’ve written to two email addresses at Tolis, including the email they supplied on their site for special COVID related issues the company is having (covidsupport@tolisgroup.com).

No replies.

This can’t be good. I’ve paid in advance for a year of support, and still have several months remaining on my contract. What’s worse is having tapes I can’t get media from without jumping the hoops I described in my previous post.

HEY TOLIS! IS ANYBODY HOME?

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.5

[Jim Curtis]

Is there truly any possibility that Tolis is on the brink? I have quite a few tapes I started archiving with BRU PE many years ago. Their format is proprietary, and If I have to convert my tapes to another vendor’s format, that could take weeks.

I am paying for support. Their pledge when I signed on was they’d respond within 24 hours.

Their slogan is “It’s the restore that matters.” Well, I can’t restore my tape. And yes, that matters.

I have a workaround: Pull my ATTO HBA from my 2019 Mac, install it on my 2012 Mac, and use the last working build of BRU PE for High Sierra to import my tape catalog, restore the contents, and then copy them over ethernet to my editing Mac. Another downside is that all my PCI slots are in use in that computer, and using it for an archive station renders it useless for what I have it configured.

As sure as shinola, if I swap cards, I’ll hear from them asking me to try something on my new Mac and current ArGest app. That routine gets old quickly. However, that’s what I had to do for the first couple of months after their build for Catalina was released with loads of bugs and I became a reluctantly assigned beta tester.

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.5