Hello -
Here's what I have so far:
Dr. Blinn -
The SCSI command issued by the "mt" command is going to the tape drive,
not to the loader. The behavior of the loader depends on how whoever
built it decided to make it work. Clearly, whoever built the TZ877 had
a mental model that said that it should automatically load the next tape
if one were available. (This can be a useful feature provided that all
of the system software understands that it will happen.) As far as I
know (and I am NOT an expert in tape robot hardware), there is no kind
of standard for this that says all tape robots should do this (it might
even be configurable on the TZ877, I simply don't know). Apparently,
whoever built the TL891 did not choose to make the robot work that way.
This does not surprise me.
Unless the TL891 came with some kind of programmer's guide that tells
you how to issue commands to it (e.g., with the "scu" utility) to set
parameters to control its default behavior, you're probably going to
have to continue to send it media management commands (using a utility
such as "mcutil" for example). I trust you did read all the manuals
that came with the TL891.. I've look via an intranet search and so far
I haven't found any really useful looking stuff. There is a reference
guide for the TL881/TL891 but I haven't waded through it.. it might
be helpful or not, depending on the way the tape robot was designed.
Steve March -
I went from a TZ877 to a TL891 as well. I found the TL891 easier to use.
You need to load the software that comes with it (follow the instructions
carefully!) but once it's installed it has a nice set of commands you can
use in shell scripts as well as a nice GUI utility (which I never use). I
use the 'robot' command to automate the loading and unloading of tapes. Here
is some sample code to help you out.
CTR=`cat tapectr.txt`
print "Using tape in slot $CTR" >> /tmp/archiveback.log
robot load slot $CTR drive 0 2>> /tmp/archiveback.log
if [ $CTR -gt 9 ]; then
let CTR=0
else
let CTR=$CTR+1
fi
print $CTR > tapectr.txt
...
# run your backup command
...
# return tape back to original location
robot home drive 0 2>> /tmp/archiveback.log
...
Richard Tame -
I do not have the manual handy so I can not help in detail here, but, there
is definitely a setting that makes the TL891 behave like a TZ877. This has
to do with auto loading and from memory there are three setting that need
changing (from the defaults) on the front panel.
The settings are not particularly obvious so I suggest going through the
users manual in detail until you find this section.
I'll provide more information, and a final answer ASAP. So far, I think I
am on the right trail with the information provided above. I set the TL891
"library mode" to "sequential dlt0" and the tapes cycle in to the tape drive
when I use the "mt rewoffl" command, which is how the TZ877 performed. But,
now the mcutils will not work. The mcutil command returns a error code of
"1", which is an unknown error, followed by:
Sense Key(0x2): Not Ready
Additional Sense Code/Qualifier (0x4 / 0x8): vendor unique
Sense Data: 70 0 2 0 0 0 0 4 H 0 0 0 0 4 ffffff8e 0 0 0 0
Thanks,
Thomas A. Kemp
tom.kemp_at_dowjones.com
Received on Wed Nov 15 2000 - 00:06:20 NZDT