Re: Select a tape in a TS2900 magazine programmatically -- MIDRANGE-L

All these tidbits of learning from list contributors are great assets to the community!

As y'all are likely aware I've spent decades on IBM i, much of that doing backups, designing and migrating systems, and for the last decade plue, assisting hundreds of customers move onto cloud systems. Once you're in a cloud there is nobody to put tapes into a drive! In fact, other than a couple ancient QIC and 8MM drives for import purposes, the ONLY thing we have are library devices!

In all those migrations a solid half of inbound customers have zero skills with library devices! Often, even if they have a library, it was treated like a drive. I've had MANY customers tell me things like "You can't do a SAVE 21 to a library device" and "You can't do a SAVE 21 in batch" or "Tape libraries require BRMS" and other incorrect things. The worst ones are "I've been an AS/400 administrator for more than 30 years, I know you cannot do a full system save to a library or in a batch job!" My general reply is "The correct way to say that is that /you/ don't know how to do those things, not that they cannot be done. I'll be happy to teach you if you're willing to let me."

Seeing how often this happens, rather than pick on anyone for not knowing a thing, I merely bring education. Hopefully the OP lears a thing, and hopefully lurkers lean as well. I've had several direct emails over the years from folks saying: "Thanks for that, I learned another thing!"

- DrF

On 11/24/2024 3:23 PM, Jerry Draper wrote:

Concur.

Given that you know which tape you want to use you can run any tape operation and specify the tape you want to use and it will find it in the library and load it for you.

You can do a DSPTAPCTG DEV(TS2900mlb) OUTPUT(*OUTFILE) OUTFILE(QGPL/DSPTAPCTG) and then parse the *OUTFILE for what tapes are in the TS2900.

You can specify *rewind or *leave or, when done, *unload.

Jerry

On 11/24/2024 9:38 AM, Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis wrote:

Late to the party here but if you've home-grown your own backup, there is no 'secret' to loading a tape. You don't even need M&SE.

Simply using the TAPMLBnn device, the tape specified in the VOL parameter is loaded. No matter what volume is currently in the drive is moved out and the volume you've requested is moved in.

Of course you need to know that tape is available but you can retrieve the list of volumes using an API as already mentioned.

- DrF

On 11/22/2024 12:38 PM, Buck Calabro wrote:

I'm looking at revising our homegrown backup process. We have a TS2900 LTO7 autoloader/drive. The web GUI works great for moving a tape to and from the magazine and drive. I'd like to do the same thing in a program.

I looked at the APIs for tape, and while I can use QTARTLBL to get the volume ID of the tape in the drive, I don't see a way to move tapes from the magazine to the drive. I know that BRMS does it, but I can't find the appropriate API.

My budget is $0.00 and whatever time I can find while eating lunch at my desk. BRMS is not an option.

Thanks!