removing of Tape from system

[Milan Sykora]

Please Help me,

how can I remove Tape device from HP Ux 11?

I have now 3 tapes - Instance 6, 7 and 8 in the system and I would like to have Instance 0, 1 and 2 what have I to do?

[Pete Randall]

Milan,

You can create new device files of your own choosing. I'm attaching the procedure I've used in the past.


Pete

[Milan Sykora]

Thank you Pete,

this is from man mksf:

The mksf command makes a special file in the devices directory,
normally /dev, for an existing device, a device that has already been
assigned an instance number by the system.

but I have not assigned Instance numbers 0,1 and 2.

If I tried it - was this message:
mksf: Couldn't find driver matching arguments

Milan

[Pete Randall]

Milan,

I guess I mis-understood your question, then. Why would you be concerned about what the instance numbers are?


Pete

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If this is important to you then the fix is rather simple.

cd /dev/rmt
ls -l 6m* 7m* 8m* | lp

Note the major and minor device numbers for 6m,6mb,6mn, and 6mnb (and the 7x and 8x nodes as well).

Now remove 6m*, 7m*, and 8m* using rm.

Finally recreate the device nodes using the desired major/minor device numver tuples.

Let's say that 6m was 205 0x020000
rm 6m
mknod 0m c 205 0x020000

You have now changed 6m to 0m. The box only cares about the major/minor device number; us dumb humans use the names.

[Milan Sykora]

Sorry Pete,

O.K.

I have in my system (if I use ioscan) only 3 tapes. And they have numbers 6, 7 and 8. And my question is WHY? I think, that there were in the past tapes 0....5 , but they were removed from system, but the system remembered their Instance numbers and for the new tapes assined the folowing
Instance numbers.
And I would like to have now the numbers from Tape 0 again.

Milan

[Pete Randall]

Milan,

If you really want to change the instance numbers, you could try using rmsf to remove all the device files associated with your tape drives, old and new, then reboot. I don't know if that will change the instance numbers or not, but it might be worth a try.


Pete

[Milan Sykora]

Pete,

yes it was done. But without success.

I removed all special files from all tapes
(rmsf). I disconnected all tapes , I rebooted system (in ioscan were not any tapes) than I connected the tapes and If I made ioscan the Instance numbers were higher.

Milan

[Pete Randall]

Sorry, Milan. Something is nagging the back of my mind about changing instance numbers but I can't for the life of me recall what it was. Maybe someone else can come up with something.


Pete

[Milan Sykora]

IÅ¥s O.K. Pete

Thank you

Mil