[Info-vax] Using MRU

[Paul Sture]

In article <RTl1n.21895$er1.20583 at en-nntp-07.dc1.easynews.com>,
 "Syltrem" <syltremzulu at videotron.ca> wrote:

> I upgraded the Alpha version to 1.8B and that should support cartridges 
> names (barcode labels) as per documentation
> 
> As found in the MRU18B_IGUIDE.TXT :
> The LOAD command moves a cartridge from a slot into a drive.
> 
> LOAD { SLOT slot_number } [ DRIVE drive_number ] [ ROBOT robot_name ] [ CART 
> cartridge_name ]
> 
> Can I load a cartridge directly by name or must I always know what slot it 
> resides in ? It seems to me that naming the cartridge is much easier; I 
> don't really care what slot it's in...
> 
>      (1)
> $ robot load drive 0 cart "abc" robot gka0
> The LOAD command requires a Slot parameter.
> %ROBOT-E-CLI_EXPECTS_ARG, CLI: Parameter expects argument
> 
>      (2)
> $ robot load drive 0 cart "abc" robot gka0 slot 2
> LOAD failed on gka0: Cartridge invalid.
> %ROBOT-E-CART_INVALID, Cartridge invalid
> 
> I understand the result of my 2nd command as I don't have an "abc" cartridge 
> and the doc also says that if you specify both SLOT and CART parameters, MRU 
> will check that the expected cartridge is in the specified slot before 
> taking action upon it.
> 
> But how about command 1 ? Isn't that supposed to work directly without me 
> having to do a FIND to start with ?
> Especially when FIND will only display the slot on the screen, I have to 
> redirect output to find out what slot it is in DCL, etc. Not very pratical.
> 
> Same for UNLOAD, it's not important to know in what slot the cassette will 
> go, if I can always retrieve it by name (after all, that's why we use 
> barcodes to name the cartridges...)
> 
> I'm not sure what's the difference in the syntax from dthe doc, between  {} 
> and [], what is optional and what is not.
> I would like to LOAD and UNLOAD cartridges by name, without bothering with 
> slot numbers which are not important.
> 


I have never used the cartridge name myself. However I do recall that 
some colleagues had a robot which used bar codes on the tapes to 
identify them - this was a Tru64 system so I didn't use it myself. The 
bar codes identified the physical tape, not the tape label as known by 
the operating system (not all operating systems understand ANSI tape 
labels, as used by VMS).

I suggest trying:

$ robot load drive 0 slot 2 robot gka0

although if you only have one robot, you are best defining the logical 
name MRU_ROBOT to point to the device and omitting the robot parameter.

$ DEFINE MRU_ROBOT robot_name

-- 
Paul Sture