The renaming-of-rmts makes me shiver, for what are atavistic reasons,
I guess.

I keep track of the same mappings: "This serial number has this
physical location, and is this drive name on the lib manager".  But I
keep it in a little csv file,


DRIVE0,000007892730,460,new
DRIVE1,000007892835,470,new
DRIVE2,000007892870,480,new
DRIVE3,000007892900,490,new
DRIVE4,000007892702,100,new
DRIVE5,000007892704,101,new
DRIVE6,000007892705,102,new
DRIVE7,000007892710,103,new

rather than in the ODM.  Maybe it's just "dinking with the ODM" that
frightens me.

Then I've got a script which takes that csv file, looks at the tapes
that are out there, and does e.g.


update path CTRL DRIVE6 srct=server destt=drive libr=3592lib device=/dev/rmt4
update path CTRL DRIVE4 srct=server destt=drive libr=3592lib device=/dev/rmt0
update path CTRL DRIVE0 srct=server destt=drive libr=3592lib device=/dev/rmt6
update path CTRL DRIVE7 srct=server destt=drive libr=3592lib device=/dev/rmt13
update path CTRL DRIVE1 srct=server destt=drive libr=3592lib device=/dev/rmt2
update path CTRL DRIVE2 srct=server destt=drive libr=3592lib device=/dev/rmt3
update path CTRL DRIVE3 srct=server destt=drive libr=3592lib device=/dev/rmt9
update path CTRL DRIVE5 srct=server destt=drive libr=3592lib device=/dev/rmt8

with it.


I can run the same collection of scripts on a new machine, and get the
right device paths for instances on that box.


This is another case where the DB2 behavior will be very pleasant.  We
can finally (virtually) tack on the extra columns we need, so we can
demonstrate their utility.



- Allen S. ROut