When trying to list an empty tape : tar tf /dev/st0 the system fails to open new processes (bash shells in my case) After some time (~3 min) tar reports an error and everything is working again.
This smells more like a problem with the st0 driver open than with tar, so I'm changing the component for suggestions on what to do.
Sounds like the tape drive does not support disconnect or is jumpered to not do disconnect. Is the disk on the same scsi bus ?
Yes, it is. The system is a Dell PowerEdge1300. Lines from dmesg: (scsi0) <Adaptec AIC-7890/1 Ultra2 SCSI host adapter> found at PCI 2/11/0 (scsi0) Wide Channel, SCSI ID=7, 32/255 SCBs (scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 396 instructions downloaded enable_irq() unbalanced from d001b401 scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.28/3.2.4 <Adaptec AIC-7890/1 Ultra2 SCSI host adapter> scsi : 1 host. (scsi0:0:0:0) Synchronous at 80.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 31. Vendor: IBM Model: DNES-309170W Rev: SA60 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03 Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 (scsi0:0:1:0) Synchronous at 80.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 15. Vendor: IBM Model: DRHS36V Rev: 0370 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03 Detected scsi disk sdb at scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0 (scsi0:0:3:0) Synchronous at 40.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 32. Vendor: HP Model: C5683A Rev: C908 Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 17783301 [8683 MB] [8.7 GB] sda: sda1 sda2 < sda5 sda6 sda7 > SCSI device sdb: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 72170879 [35239 MB] [35.2 GB] sdb: sdb1