on many of my servers I've defined the internal 8mm drive as a manual
     library

Library Name  Library     Device            Private   Scratch   External
              Type                          Category  Category  Manager
------------  ----------  ----------------  --------  --------  --------------
8MMLIBR       MANUAL
8MMLIBR       MANUAL
TTC3494LIB3   349X        /dev/lmcp0        600       601

Now it has been a while since I've had to use one of these (now that all our
servers are using server-to-server) but I believe you only have to
        1) have some already labeled tapes handy
        2) direct some activity to the device class associated with the
                manual library
                ex: backup db t=f s=y dev=8mmtape

adsm> q dev 8* f=d

             Device Class Name: 8MMTAPE
        Device Access Strategy: Sequential
            Storage Pool Count: 0
                   Device Type: 8MM
                        Format: DRIVE
         Est/Max Capacity (MB): 0.0
                   Mount Limit: DRIVES
              Mount Wait (min): 60
         Mount Retention (min): 60
                  Label Prefix: ADSM
                       Library: 8MMLIBR

and this will issue a request for a scratch tape mount, which should be any tape
with a valid label not yet known to the adsm environment...

Practical ?  OH YES !


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Scratch volumes and manual devices
Author:  andrew (andrew AT BRAEMARGROUP DOT COM) at unix,mime
Date:    2/24/99 2:41 PM


If you have manual devices for your backup, instead of some sort of library,
can you use scratch volumes? If so is it practical?

Thanks