[Wlug] SCSI Tape Drive Question

We have a kicking VA Linux 4450 server with a VXA-V17 tape drive in it. Unfortunatly the tape drive isn't seen by linux. It shows up in the scsi bios utilities. There is no mention of a tape drive in dmesg or /var/log/messages after bootup, and it doesn't work when you try something like "mt -f /dev/st0 status". The drive is on scsi channel B, does that make a difference? Is there some way to scan the scsi bus manually? I checked /proc/config.gz and tape drive support is built in. Any ideas, suggestions? -Marc