Gerald,

These are normal on AIX (at least on our 3494's).  I've got a daily script that
parses the aix error report, excludes the two identifiers E507DCF9 and D1A1AE6F
(as shown below) and shows the ten most recent messages.

The cleaning does happen, it's just that the cleaning requests show up in the
error log.

Regards,

Ben

> We have an ibm h70 running aix 4.3.3 and TSM 3.7.3. It s hooked up to an ibm
> 3494 with two magstar 3590 drives. A month ago we saw some tape drive needs
> cleaning messages in the aix error report. They repeated today..
>
> IDENTIFIER TIMESTAMP  T C RESOURCE_NAME  DESCRIPTION
> E507DCF9   1210101500 I H rmt1           TAPE DRIVE NEEDS CLEANING
> D1A1AE6F   1210101500 I H rmt1           TAPE SIM/MIM RECORD
>
> I m wondering if this is normal? To my knowledge the 3494 should be cleaning
> itself as it does have cleaning tapes and is all configured to do so
> automatically.
>
> Gerald Wichmann
> Systems Engineer
> Sansia System Solutions
> 408-844-8893 work
> 408-884-9801 fax