topic Re: Testing tapes on VMS in Operating System - OpenVMS

Testing tapes on VMS

Tom Wolf_3 — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 16:22:06 GMT

Hello all. I'm coming to VMS from an HP-UX background. I have a large number of DLT III tapes that I want to test for usability by writing to and then reading from them. In the HP-UX world I would normally use the tar command to perform this operation (for example #tar -cvf /dev/rmt/1m /etc, #tar -tvf /dev/rmt/1m) but I'm uncertain of which commands to use for VMS. I'm running VMS 7.2-1 on a VAX 7000. Any assistance from the VMS geniuses out there would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom

Re: Testing tapes on VMS

Jeffery D. Urmann — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 18:13:03 GMT

Tom,

Welcome to the wonderful world of VMS.

I do not recall the device naming conventions for STI (MU: I think) or DISSI (MT ??) tape drives, but I believe they both started with M. SCSI tape drives start with MK. The third letter delineates the bus. The number following indicates the device number. The colon delineates the device. There may be a leading dollar sign plus a name or number, if so, this system may be part of a cluster and for completeness, you should include them when specifying the device.

$ Show Device M

will show all of the devices that start with M. One of them is your tape drive. Substitute your device name with /dev/rmt/1m. MB devices are mailboxes; ignore them. Also note that VMS is case insensitive.

The tar equivalent command in VMS is Backup. The OpenVMS Help command is the equivalent to man pages. The forward slash is the equivalent of the dash; both qualify the command. So, for help on command usage, type:

$ Help Backup

The tape must first be mounted.

$ Mount /Foreign $1$MKA0:

Then you can use backup...

$ Backup /Rewind /Verify /Log files-to-backup $1$MKA0:saveset.bck /SaveSet /Ignore = Label_Processing !to write starting from the beginning of the tape
$ Backup /List $1$MKA0:saveset.bck /SaveSet !to see the contents on the tape.
$ Backup $1$MKA0:saveset.bck /SaveSet [] !to restore from tape to the current location

You could also use the copy command, but you must mount the tape drive as a file oriented device first.

$ Initialize $1$MKA0: Test ! erase the contents of the tape (well, actually just put a new label)
$ Mount $1$MKA0: Test
$ Copy files-to-copy $1$MKA0:[0,0]
$ Directory $1$MKA0:[0,0]

Hope this helps you started. Just ask here again if you have any questions about what you see in help.

Enjoy,

--Jeff

Re: Testing tapes on VMS

Antoniov. — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 02:55:52 GMT

Tom,
welcome to vms!

Jeffery's post can help you.
Warning, because post justify is wrong (not by Jefferey mistake), 1.st example (Backup/rewind ...) is unique command line, no splitted by $1$MKA0:
Here dollar symbol means only shell, you don't type dollar itself.

Tom I hope read you next days.

Antonio Vigliotti

Re: Testing tapes on VMS

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 04:05:59 GMT

Tom,

DLT tapes have a built in redundancy (comparable with raid set of 5 disks of which 1 is redundant). So, bad tape parts are not always detected by your test, only completely bad tapes. See other discussions within OpenVMS.

Wim

Re: Testing tapes on VMS

Ian Miller. — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 04:26:15 GMT

INIT/ERASE Mxxxx writes the whole tape.

Re: Testing tapes on VMS

Jan van den Ende — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 05:32:43 GMT

Tom,

with SHOW DEV M
you risk drowning your wished-for info in the many mailboxes.
Avoid that by

PIPE SHOW DEVICE D | SEARCH SYS$PIPE MBA/MATCH=NOR

This way you get ALL tape devices, even if you have some old or third-party drive.
Except for the already-mentioned MK and MT devices, I have once used MS, MU, MF.
I am not sure that this list is complete, but the above PIPE willl find them all.

On the BACKUP command: like indicated above, HELP is your friend.
Any remaining questions? Just come back here.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: Testing tapes on VMS

Karl Rohwedder — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 05:47:10 GMT

Just a small type in the previous entry:

$ PIPE SHO DEV M...

---------------^

regards Kalle

Re: Testing tapes on VMS

Tom Wolf_3 — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 11:11:19 GMT

Thanks to everyone for all the useful information.

Sincerely,
TJW

Re: Testing tapes on VMS

Antoniov. — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 11:43:58 GMT

Tom,
Jeffery is almost pro. May you assign him some points?
Please read here
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33

Thank you for your participation!

Antonio Vigliotti