Accessing autoloader slots from HP/UX?

[ITeam]

Does anyone know of a way to force SureStore 24x6 to select a particular slot from within HP/UX? We will not be having Omniback or other packages - only unix shell.
I recall some time back that someone posted details of a command or little c-program that would do this for you. (Customer wants to select a different tape slot for each day of the week ... Lazy/risky customer!).
Many thanks.

[Jaan Kold]

I guess youre looking for the 'mtx' utility. It should be on the CD that came with the DAT loader.
If not avail, its here too:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/information_storage/surestore/dat/

jk

[Bill Hassell]

mtx has been obsolete for many years and does not run on current versions of HP-UX. The correct command is mc (media changer). Since the mc command handles a wide variety of devices (tape loaders, magneto-optical libraries) and small (6 tape changer) to very large (10 DLT drives with 200+ slots with barcode sensors), the man page is a bit confusing.

Get a copy of two scripts that illustrate the versatility of mc. One is called autosum and reports a large amount of information about the device, and the other is called loadmedia which is what is being requested. The loadmedia script is smart enough to find an empty slot in case the drive is stil full. Larger (multi-drive) libraries will need more sophisticated logic. Point a browser to:

ftp://contrib:9unsupp8@hprc.external.hp.com/sysadmin/coolscripts/

This works fine with all versions of Netscape and Opera (and even Lynx). IE users will have to turn off the icon view in ftp to prevent hangs (IE bug). Or simply use ftp to the machine name: hprc.external.hp.com and login with contrib, password 9unsupp8.

[Michael Tully]

Check out this post, it has a script attached that should help you.

Bill is quite correct (usually is) that 'mtx' is obsolete.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x4696e7e60861d511abcd0090277a778c,00.html

HTH
-Michael