Notice about Integrated Autoloaders when Used with Sysback

Contents

About this document
    Related documentation
How to enable autoloading when using Sysback
Choosing the Autoload Feature when using Sysback

About this document

This document provides information on options to enable tape autoloading when Sysback is being used.

This document applies to any version of Sysback, AIX and Atape Driver. It also applies to autoloader models 7332, 3570, 3390, 3590 and any other autoloader with integrated drive and library electronics.

Related documentation

Page D-1 of the Sysback manual, the second to last paragraph, applies to tape library models 7332, 3570, 3490, 3590 and any other tape library in which the drive and the library electronics are integrated. This is denoted by /dev/rmtX.smc style devices. This does not include models 7331, 7335, 7337, etc.

How to enable autoloading when using Sysback

The option Use Autoload Feature at End of Tape should always be disabled when using Sysback. To enable autoloading, choose one of the following:
  1. Set the library to Sequential/Automatic mode. This leaves tapes in the export position and will autoload on eject.

  2. Set the library to Random mode and Use Random Mode to Emulate an Autoloader on the device driver characteristics by entering the command chdev -l rmtX -a emulate_auto=yes. This will leave the tapes in import position and will autoload on eject.

Choosing the Autoload Feature when using Sysback

If you choose to use the Use Autoload Feature at End of Tape option, this will make all tapes in the backup set work as if it were one long tape with the following caveats:

  1. There will be no header on the front of any tape but the first.
  2. On all of the spanned tapes, you must run a tctl -f /dev/rmtX fsf 1 before you get to the first header.
  3. Only reading and writing will span tapes with Use Autoload Feature.
  4. You cannot use fsf or bsf (fastforward or backspace) to span tapes.
  5. When restoring data from any tape other than the first, you must manually position to the correct image.
  6. Attempting to restore anything beyond the first tape when not restoring the image that spans tapes will cause errors to be silently dropped and the last image before the span will be restored.

NOTE: This type of configuration is unsupported.


[ Doc Ref: 94002467920622     Publish Date: Nov. 14, 2000     4FAX Ref: 7657 ]