OptiLink Optical Storage Server

OptiLink highlights

OptiLink Components

Administration Commands

The administrative commands provided with OptiLink afford the system administrator with complete control over optical libraries and standalone optical drives. Administrators can create named platters, list the file content of a platter, add or remove optical jukeboxes, and import or export platters in an optical jukebox. All of the commands are available at the UNIX command line and can be incorporated into shell scripts to customize the maintenance of your environment. The following is a complete list of the commands available:

Media Management Commands

These commands control optical media.

oparchive

on-line, archive of optical media. Supports archive levels and allows I/O during the archive.

opcheck

synchronize volume information recorded on optical media with OptiLink media management tables.

opexport

remove a platter from an optical library or drive.

opimport

insert a platter into an optical library or stand alone drive.

opinfo

display volume information for a mounted platter

opinventory

list volumes in a jukebox

oplabel

initialize a platter with a family name and volume number.

opls

list the files found on a volume

opmove

move platter from slot to slot within an optical library.

oprestore

restore archived volume using the output from oparchive.

opsamount

mount a volume in stand alone optical drive.

opsaunmount

dismount a volume in a stand alone optical drive.

opsize

display the free space remaining on an optical volume.

opspindown

spindown a platter and enable dismounting.

Mounter Commands

These commands start and stop the OptiLink media manager, opmounter.

opmounter

daemon managing optical environment.

opqrm, opstop

halt the mounter daemon, opmounter.

Diagnostic Commands

These commands diagnose SCSI connections.

jbmodes

display jukebox SCSI mode sense information.

jbset

set jukebox driver diagnostic messaging level.

jbutil

display jukebox element status.

odmodes

display optical drive SCSI mode sense information.

odscan

scan optical media returning written or blank sector locations.

odset

set optical driver diagnostic message level.

odutil

low level drive access utility.

Optical Device Driver

The optical platter device driver is a raw character device driver that transparently supports most of the optical platter devices on the market today. This optical device driver can control any of the supported optical drives found in the section titled "Supported Optical Drives". It is also possible with this same driver to control optical drives from different manufacturers connected to the same server at the same time.

• The device driver recognizes a supported device by its response to the SCSI INQUIRY command and it configures itself to the attached device.
  
• If the system supports it, the SCSI bus can be reconfigured "on the fly" and the device driver can handle new (supported) drives correctly.
  
• Supported devices can be attached in any combination.
  
• The Opmounter interface to the drive is the same regardless of the servers platform.
  
• Rather than set drive modes to a (probably undesirable) default, the drive modes are sensed on open() and a copy is stored so that they can be restored if necessary.
  
• Automatically handles most non-fatal check conditions within the device driver.
  
• Drivers support optical volumes up to 2 terabytes of addressable storage (This is more than enough to handle any optical platter likely to be introduced in the near future).
  
• Utilities are provided with the device driver to sense and set drive modes (odmodes), exercise the drive (odutil), to scan WORM platters (odscan), to determine drive performance (perf), and set the debug and error reporting levels within the device driver (odset).

Jukebox Device Driver

A single jukebox device driver transparently operates with all jukeboxes listed in the section titled "Supported Jukebox Devices". The jukebox device drive is able to concurrently manage multiple jukebox sub-systems from the same or different manufacturers.

• Supported devices are recognized by their response to the SCSI INQUIRY command and the device driver automatically configures itself to the attached devices
  
• If the system supports dynamic reconfiguration, the driver can recognize newly configured devices (assuming that they are supported)
  
• Supported optical sub-systems can be connected in any combination
  
• The device driver provides a device-independent way of determining the jukebox's internal geometry and current state and handling certain operations whose implementations vary widely among the supported jukeboxes (e.g. extending and retracting the mailbox). There is no need to "hard-wire" jukebox parameters in an application program; nor is it necessary for the applications programmer to understand the jukebox's SCSI implementation detail.
  
• Automatically handles most non-fatal check conditions within the device driver. No intervention is required by the application program.
  
• Utilities are provided with the device driver to sense jukebox modes (jbmodes), exercise the jukebox (jbutil), and set the debug and error reporting levels within the device driver (jbset).

Optical File System

OPTICAL FILE SYSTEM (OFS) describes the format of information on optical media; the volume label, object file format, and directory structure. The structure of this information is similar to the ANSI tape label format but it has been modified to allow random access. In the industry this is commonly referred to as a "Log Based File System". The format of each optical volume is as follows:

Copyright © 1997 Consistency Point Technologies, Inc.