In regard to: Re: [Networker] udev names / persistent bindings, Lemons,...:

I'm not really disagreeing with Tim's statement that the
automatically-generated tape device file names are, er, unattractive.
But the names do have meaning; the WWID of your device is part of the
name.

I understand that and I agree that having that in *one of* the persistent
names is useful.  It's not especially human-friendly, though.

 And, I don't think we ever need to fat-finger in the device name;
both the NetWorker GUI and CLI should find these names automagically.

I'm not following.  How is the CLI going to "find" the name?

Even with tab completion, if I have say 6 tape devices and I need to
operate on just one of them, if I do

        nsrjb -v -u -f /dev/tape/by-id/<tab><tab>

and get

scsi-1STK_L700_STKA02H3W02@
scsi-350060b000020329c@

scsi-350060b0000c35006-nst@

then which one of those is drive 0 in my jukebox?  I can take the extra
step of following each link to find where they link to and figure it out
that way, but that's a pain.

Also, the longer persistent names don't display especially well in things
like nsrwatch.

So, unless I'm missing something, who cares if they're ugly (at least as
far as NetWorker is concerned)?

As I said in my original post, it's not all that often that I have to
specify a device.  Usually I can let NetWorker just choose one.  But
when I do have to specify a device, having a human-friendly name is a
big help.

So I guess as a NetWorker administrator, *I* care.

Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On 
Behalf Of Tim Mooney
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2013 3:20 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] udev names / persistent bindings

In regard to: [Networker] udev names / persistent bindings, Teresa Biehler...:

We're setting up a new Linux NetWorker server and are having problems
getting setting up the devices.  Does anyone have a reference or
suggestions on setting up the changer and tape devices with udev names
for persistent binding?

You don't say what Linux distribution and version, so it's a little hard
to make recommendations.

At least with RHEL 6.x, it's already doing persistent bindings for both
the changer and the tape drives.  The problem for me is that the
persistent names it's using for the tape drives are horrible.  It's not
all that often that I have to specify a device when using nsrjb, but when
I do, I don't want it to be

        /dev/tape/by-id/scsi-350060b00002e179a-nst

Again assuming RHEL6, there should also be a link for your changer in the
/dev/tape/by-id directory, but assuming you only have one changer visible
to the host, you would be safe using the /dev/changer link.

You may also want to search Powerlink (or whatever it's called these days)
for document 300-008-352 .  It's a PDF with technical information on tape
devices, and there's a section in there for Linux and udev.

Finally, search the mailing list archives for posts from Frank Swasey
in October 2012.  He provided some excellent guidance regarding udev and
making persistent device names that don't suck.

Tim

--
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT 
edu
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