Re: problem with multitape level 0 archive

In article <CwG0un.K1@nntpa.cb.att.com> ciesla@stairs.nw.att.com (Larry Ciesla) writes: > >Hi, > > Here is our problem: at one of >our sites, a level 0 archive spans several tapes. If, when a tape is written >and On-line is prompting you to install a second tape, and for whatever >reason, On-line decides that it is time for a checkpoint, guess what! The >server is hung and everything stops until the operator puts in the new tape! >On-line will do nothing until it can execute the checkpoint, and it will >not execute the checkpoint until a new tape is installed. What I have done is to create a daemon which wakes up every so often, does a tbstat - , and looks for CKPT REQ, checkpoint required, as the status of the engine. If it finds that it tightens the loop and looks again. If it finds it again, it presumes its waiting on tape and sends out a noisy message to the console and any others of a list of user defined ttys. What I really need it to do is call the PA system or get the operator who is on the loading dock smoking a butt, but I haven't got that figured out yet ... I have read where other people have used 2 tapes successfully. They output tbtape to a link, and have written a program which monitors the tbtape and flips the link from the first tape drive to the second tape drive, and provides the carraige returns, when they detect the wait. While we deemed this too difficult for our environment, your's sounds like it might justify this. Another usage I've seen is outputting the tbtape to a pipe which does compression before sending to a tape archive. We have used up to 5 gigabyte drives successfully and skipped the methods that would be more difficult to write or operate.