[Info-vax] MSL4048 and FC LT07

[terry-groups at glaver.org]

On Tuesday, April 9, 2019 at 12:29:26 PM UTC-4, pcov... at gmail.com wrote:
> we just installed a LT07 tape unit into a MSL4048 as tape drive 2. 
> the other 3 drives are all LT04.  with the LT04 once a tape was dismounted 
> through VMS it would mount the next tape.  with the LT07 it doesn't do that.
> would this be a VMS parameter?  and /unload doesn't make a difference.

I believe the MSL is an IBM Type 3573, as are many other brands of library. If that is the case, the left-hand menu under "Configure Library" has a "General" item which configures the library mode as either random or sequential. This is a library-wide parameter. You may need to toggle it after adding a new drive to sync things up.

The library sometimes fails to detect an added / removed tape drive. Look on the front panel LCD and you should have checkmarks for the installed drives - make sure all of your drives appear and have checkmarks. If not, you may need to power cycle the library to get it to notice. There are also some restrictions on full-height drives - they can only be in slots 1 & 2 or 3 & 4 - straddling 2 & 3 is not allowed.

By the way, at least the generic IBM and Dell flavors of this library allow you to designate more than one drive as "control path", meaning it presents the robot LUN to the host. You'll get a "are you really sure you want to do this?" confirmation message. If all of your drives are connected to the same host, it doesn't matter. If they connect to different hosts, each will need a control path.

The Hpaqital "MRU" program ("ROBOT" CLI command, just to confuse things) can be used to manipulate the robotic part of the library. The free MTX program (from Unix) will also compile with some minor syntax tweaks, at least on VSI VMS for Itanium. Speaking of VSI, I believe they have a newer version (or at least one compiled by them) of MRU. They should be familiar with this library, at least in its Dell TL4000 disguise 8-}