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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
- Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!DIALix!leo!leo!dsc
- From: dsc@leo.DIALix.oz.au (David Scott-Courtland (Contractor))
- Subject: Exabyte 8500 stacker driver query
- Message-ID: <1992Dec16.115950.20795@cancer.DIALix.oz.au>
- Sender: news@cancer.DIALix.oz.au
- Nntp-Posting-Host: leo
- Reply-To: dsc@leo.DIALix.oz.au
- Organization: Western Mining Corp.
- Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 11:59:50 GMT
- Lines: 52
-
- G'Day from Sunny W.A.
-
- I work as a Systems Admin Person (SAP) on a remote minesite in
- West Australia. They have a carton of Sun's (IPX/IPX/SS2). I have
- restructured the Leinster Nickel Operations systems to be
- server oriented. The main server is an IPX with presto card,
- 64M, 1 x 424M, 2 x 669M, 1 x 1.3G, 3 x 1.4G, cd and exabyte
- 8500 stacker. It's the last one I need some advice on.
-
- The issue is backups (isn't it always?). I have evaluated
- Networker and BudTool and in conjunction with the Technical
- Group here have decided that they are over-kill for the sites
- needs. I have written a dump script that puts a tape header, a
- file list for partitions and simply done a zero level dump onto
- each tape each night. Then I knocked up an xview program to
- give an interactive front end to the recovery. The whole system
- has been in place now for about three months and has been working
- very well. Absolutely no complaints and it serves the needs exactly.
-
- The issue I have is around the stacker. The stacker has two
- scsi targets, one for the tape unit itself and the second for
- the robotic arm. The robotic arm operates in a sequential mode
- normally and when one tape is ejected, it simply puts it away
- and gets the next one up the stack and inserts it into the
- drive. This means that when a user wishs to recover a file,
- they have to manually operate the buttons on the front of the
- unit to 'select' the next tape to be used. After the recovery,
- they have to 'select' the correct tape that WAS in the drive
- and do another eject to make the arm put that correct backup
- tape back in.
-
- Wouldn't it be nice to be able to control the arm via software?
- Well. I have read just about every reference to scsi in the
- manual set and scoured the man pages for details on how to
- control that damn device with no luck. Does anyone know of any
- manual, faq or PD stuff that I can read on how to issue scsi
- control requests to a target? I have checked in the
- /sys/sun4c/scsi directories and found many references to
- functions like scsi_reset(), scsi_control() and so on, but no
- detail, and detail is what I need. Any ideas? I understand it
- will probably require driver code, but that's ok I've written
- drivers before.
-
- Dave.
-
- +=======================================================================+
- | ,-_|\ David Scott-Courtland - Systems Software Engineer |
- | / \ Consulting to Western Mining Corporation |
- | *_,-._/ Home: (09) 370 2303 LNO (090) 265 5479 |
- | v decnet: lnos02::dsc internet: dsc@leo.DIALix.oz.au |
- +=======================================================================+
-
-