%INIT_ID_DB-W-BADPARAM, missing quotes in SYS$DEVICES.DAT

[Benjamin Levy]

Hello

On an ES40, each time it reboots, I get a warning message:
%INIT_ID_DB-W-BADPARAM, missing quotes in SYS$SYSTEM:SYS$DEVICES.DAT

The entries in SYS$DEVICES.DAT are for MGA tape devices (only). I am not much of an expert on robotic tape libraries, but as near as I can tell the message is just noise and everything is in fact working ok.

I have a reboot of this system coming up in a few weeks, and my temptation is to live with the warning, but wondering if there is something simple I should be doing to get rid of this warning.

I checked the file over pretty carefully. There are 11 entries in there for 8 tape devices - three of the MGA numbers are duplicates. If I actually type SHOW DEVICE MGA I see 5 devices online and 3 Unavailable.

I do NOT however, see any kind of issue with quote marks, which is what the warning says is a problem. I looked for hidden control characters, looked for an extra file in SYS$SPECIFIC, etc, but cannot find any extra quotes.

VMS version is V7.3-2 with UPDATE 300 and FIBRE_SCSI 400 - I admit it is quite old but I've also seen older.

Any advice? thx.

[John Gillings]

Benjamin,

If it's a warning, it should be looked at.

Why are there duplicates?

It might help to post your SYS$DEVICES.DAT file so we can see exactly what's in it, rather than guessing.

[Benjamin Levy]

file attached

[Benjamin Levy]

and here is the SHOW DEVICE display

[John Gillings]

Benjamin,

There's a warning message about the file.
There are obviously old and incorrect entries
Coincidence?

I'm still wondering why you need the duplicates?

Even though I can't put my finger on any obvious syntactic errors, I'd be tempted to delete all the obsolete entries in the file, or even blow it away completely and recreate it from scratch.

[Art Wiens]

"I'm still wondering why you need the duplicates?"

You don't "need them", you get them for free when you change out a tape drive and run the io scan. The process doesn't tidy up the file, it just tacks the new one at the end.

Handy in one sense if you ever get the feeling that one tape drive is being replaced more than the others ... just go count them.

The only thing I can see different to a file on one of my systems is the lack of spaces after the device serial number - expecting fixed length records?

! Updated 18-OCT-2008 07:12:32.47: DEC TZ89 (C) DEC
!
[Device $2$MGA3]
WWID=04100022:"DEC TZ89 (C) DECJF81582259"
!


! Updated 14-JUL-2010 14:36:35.55: IBM ULTRIUM-TD1
!
[Device $2$MGA28]
WWID=03100030:"IBM ULTRIUM-TD1 W503360079 "
!

Cheers,
Art

[Benjamin Levy]

OK - I will remove the duplicates, but no other ideas. Thx for the help!

[Benjamin Levy]

OK - I will remove duplicates. Sounds like no other ideas. Removing the duplicates certainly couldn't hurt. thx for explanation as to how the duplicates got in there in the first place!