The short and the long of it:

     There is no way to specifically tell ADSM to delete a version(s) of a
     file.

     But, from your description, you can:
     1. update copygroup verexists to 1, activate policyset, do a new incr
        this gets rid of all but the last (active) version of a file.

     2. update copygroup retainonly and retainextra to 0, activate policyset.
     issue expire inventory.  This gets ADSM to forget about inactive files.

     3. If the files are "uniquely identified by the sub-directory structure
     above the files" add those dirs to the exclude list.  Run Incrmental.  The
     files in the excluded dirs get marked inactive. The next expire inventory
     should then remove them from the tapes.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Deleting Backups
Author:  Mark Rizzo <Mark.Rizzo AT DIGITAL DOT COM> at ~Internet
Date:    1/22/98 4:52 PM


ADSM'ers,

For over a year, we have been incrementally backing up files
as they are added to a file system. All of the files are
uniquely identified by the sub-directory structure above the
files. Some of the files are uniquely named, but others have
the same name and are uniquely identified only by the full
path name. Now we are running out of tape capacity and we
want to "clean up" some of the tape space and delete files no
longer needed from the tapes. We need a way to select these
incrementally backed up files for deletion by time/date or
by full path name and wild-carded file name (file specification),
as you can do with the DSMC DELETE ARCHIVE command. We
cannot determine from the documentation how this is done, if
in fact it can be done, if the files were backed up verses archived.
The files reside in a file system with other files more recently
backed up which we Do Not want to delete, so we cannot use the
DSMC DELETE FILESPACE command. The DSMC DELETE ARCHIVE
command provides the capability we need for files which were
archived, but this capability does not appear to be available for files
incrementally backed up. Is there any way to do what we want
to do?

Thanks,
Mark Rizzo
mark.rizzo AT digital DOT com
DoD