Multiple tape vdumps from cron

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi all,

The release notes for 5.1B-3 and later, state that the following changes were made:

"Modifies vdump and vrestore to support autoloader or manual loader when the dump size exceeds single tape size"

and

"Modifies vdump and vrestore so they can be run as cron or batch jobs"


Does anyone know how to actually use that functionality ? I see nothing in the man pages...

I'm trying to get a vdump run from cron to automatically load a second tape when the first tape is full.

Cheers,

Rob

[John Manger]

IIRC, the change to vdump/vrestore was to prevent them exiting when they ask for input from the controlling tty. Cron doesnt have a controlling tty, so jobs that try to use it usually fail. Thus before the 'fix', if a new tape was required, or operator input was needed, vdump exited, and the dump was useless.

I'd guess that to use it with multiple tapes, the script has to simulate what the human operator would have typed .... ?

Maybe someone from HP, or someone who has scripted this, could remind us all ?

John M

[Pieter 't Hart]

it's been a while since i juggled with autoloaders.

But also with single tape-unit backup can be made on multiple tapes.


-T tape_num Specifies the starting number for the first tape. The default number is 1. The tape number is used only to prompt the operator to load another tape in the drive.

I don't think vdump/vrestore itself controls the loader.
The difference lies in operator intervention.

You must configure the loader to automatically load the next tape

- older loaders must have key switch in "square arrow" position.
- tapes must be in subsequent slots
- loaders with barcode reader must have tapelabels with same prefix and sequencing numbers?

Do you have the Media Robot Utility (MRU) installed?