RE: Purging an IFS stream file from backups

"Jim referred to LTFS in an earlier email. I'm still wondering if that would just blast the whole sequence number and not just one of the many files stored in that individual sequence number."

I'm pretty sure it would blast the whole sequence number. The iSeries uses a unique method of saving things-- With SAVLIB you can save a library and with RSTOBJ restore a single object from that library, or use RSTLIB and restore the entire library. But if you DSPTAP DATA(*LABELS) all you get is a single file name. It's only the iSeries that knows the internal format of the files within that single file; only the iSeries can read tapes in the SAVOBJ/SAVLIB format and make sense of them.

You can save a file to tape using CPYTOTAP with TOFILE(QTAPE), which will write a file that -any- system that can mount that tape can read.

A side note about LTFS-- it appears it was a proposal by IBM. I wonder if it's structured similar to a SAVLIB/SAVOBJ? It would then be a 'simple' feature to add to the iSeries OS!
A side note about SAVFs-- I've long suspected that a SAVF uses the same file structure as a SAVLIB to tape. You can do the same things to it-- restore a single object when you saved a library, &c. And the SAVSAVFDTA command just copies the already-saved data directly to removable media-- and you can then restore objects from the tape using RSTOBJ, just as if you'd originally saved the objects directly to tape.

Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Rob Berendt
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2018 11:41 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Purging an IFS stream file from backups

Paul,

Jim referred to LTFS in an earlier email. I'm still wondering if that
would just blast the whole sequence number and not just one of the many
files stored in that individual sequence number.


Rob Berendt