ADSM-L

Re: 3494 mystery

2001-08-07 12:09:50
Subject: Re: 3494 mystery
From: "Richard L. Rhodes" <rhodesr AT FIRSTENERGYCORP DOT COM>
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 12:10:26 -5
On 7 Aug 2001, at 14:22, Loon, E.J. van - SPLXM wrote:
> Hi Rick!
> The 3494 uses the library manager (the PC with an customized OS/2, which is
> located inside your library control unit frame) to control this. Your AIX
> host uses the ATLDD driver to address the library. The library manager
> assigns a drive to your mount request and reports this back to your host.
> I hope this explains.

Well, not exactly.  AIX knows a drive by it's scsi/fc address, for
which aix creates a device (/dev/rmtx).  When you define the drive to
tsm, you specify the device (/dev/rmtx).  The aix device (say,
/dev/rmt1) has no knowledge that this drive is in the 4th frame and
is the bottom left drive (which is what the robot needs to know).
Yes, the os/2 pc knows all about the tape drives, what bay there in,
their location in the bay, but has no knowledge of the AIX device.
So somehow the 3494, aix, and tsm have to coordinate which tape drive
is used.

The only thing I can find that both the 3494 and aix/tsm know about
is the drive serial number.  Here is one of my drives from a
"mtlib -l /dev/lmcp0 -D" command (THanks Mr Sims for your wonderful
documentation!).

      70, 00F35130 003590E1A70

Here is a "lscfg -v" for the same drive:

  rmt5              10-58-00-0,0      IBM 3590 Tape Drive and Medium
                                      Changer
        Manufacturer................IBM
        Machine Type and Model......03590E1A
        Serial Number...............0000000F3513
        Device Specific.(FW)........E32E
        Loadable Microcode Level....A0B00E26

So one method might be that when the 3494 mounts a volume in a free
drive, he might inform tsm of which drive by specifying the serial
number.  TSM would then match up the serial number to the AIX device
number, and read/write to that device.

Yes, yes, I know, none of this is important . . . . I must curious.

Rick
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