Serial number of tape drives

[JAOUHARI]

Hi,

How to find the serial number of the tape drives in OpenVms.

The drives are located in a ESL712e.

Regards,

[Hoff]

Some disk and some tape drives have embedded serial numbers that are host-readable, and some do not. Commodity drives do not.

When poking around for this from within OpenVMS, check the OpenVMS error logs, check the CLUE CONFIG output (a command inside ANALYZE/SYSTEM, one of several CLUE commands useful for system-level information), and check the output of the following (undocumented) command:

$ si :== $sys$etc:scsi_info
$ si ddcu:

where ddcu: is the name of the target tape device. (I don't have a drive handy that has the Vendor Product Data (VPD) structures to test this, so I can't check to see if scsi_info displays that data.)

There may be other approaches, depending on your particular OpenVMS version and/or what else you have installed.

Another approach involves the use of the ESL console -- this if you just want the serial number, and you're not specifically seeking host-level hardware configuration auditing. Or HP SIM. For the latter, see the HP SIM documentation around the Command View for ESL / Command View for TL tools.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Tried si and clue config on 6.2 1h3 (a 2100) and on 7.3 (a 4100). Serial number was not shown.

Wim

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

F$GETDVI has an item serialnum but this only returns something in case of disks. If the lexical can't get it, I guess there is no general way of finding it.

Wim

[Ian Miller.]

LTT may obtain this information if the drive has it.

See
http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=06/12/07/3024178

for information on the latest version of LTT

[Hoff]

OpenVMS V8.3 has an undocumented and unsupported tool that can get at and can display the VPD-based serial number information, should one exist within the particular specified device:

$ SET COMMAND SYS$ETC:CDDVD$TOOLS.CLD
$ CDDVD/INQUIRE ddcu:

DIAGNOSE privilege is required.

Not all devices have VPD.

This and other tools within that CLD are intended as part of maintaining CD and DVD recording operations, but this tool was extended and tested with various magnetic disks and a few tape drives. Retrieving the VPD is simple; there are tools around that can be modified to retrieve this data, and it's easy to create a tool that tosses the necessary IO$_DIAGNOSE operations at the device.