Re: Testing of Archive tapes.

On Wed, 1 May 1996, Mickey Mestel wrote: > tom, > > > Wouldn't it be nice if your hardware vendor offered a service to check your Archives for you? I cannot think of a simpler solution. > > > is this a plug;-) > > mickm > Yes, it would be. We have recently encountered some apparent incompatibilities between tape drives that are theoretically identical and are set up with identical settings und er AIX on our RS6000. In frustratioin of dealing iwth that I asked Informix for some assistance in being able to identify what an archive tape should look like short of restoring it to identical system. They can be dd'ed to a file which when dumped with an od -c will show Informix header info about an Archive. The first 10 blocks contain enough to know that the tape is readable on that drive. This includes online version number and and a time stamp. The time stamp is not exactly what you see in your online.log but it is within a few seconds. I suspect there is more there if you knew how to decipher it. My purpose was simply to know that the archive tape was readable on a particular drive and that would be recognized as an archive tape. Hope this helps. Send back if you need more specifics or ask Informix. -- Con Woodall Colorado St. U.; Veterinary Teach. Hosp.; Ft. Collins CO 80523, USofA; 970-491-1244 FAX 970-491-1205 cwoodall@vth1.vth.colostate.edu "Ask me about my vow of silence!" --