> I'm not sure how I would get a process on a linux LPAR to > send a message to > the S/390 console either.
Ugh. That's right, you're running in a bare LPAR. This isn't going to be particularly easy, but here's a possibility: 1) Set up USS if you haven't already. When you're setting up USS, install and configure the syslog daemon in USS. Set up a specific class of messages in syslog that will be routed to the ops console that has your automation widget enabled. 2) Read the man page on the Linux side for setting up syslog.conf. You want to route messages for the same specific message class to the OS/390 syslogd over the network (if you don't have IP connectivity between OS/390 and Linux, then I think you're probably stuck). 3) Write a small tool that accepts input from stdin and writes it out to the syslog daemon using the selected message class. This is probably a quick Perl script (I think there is a Tools::syslog package, but don't quote me on it). This should get a message from your Linux system over to the OS/390 system so that you can trigger some OS/390 based automation to move the drive around, etc. If Ops/MVS can drive a telnet session, then you could also do all the LPAR magic to make the drive available to the Linux LPAR, telnet into the Linux system as user 'amanda', su to root, insmod the tape driver or kick it to make it recognize the tape, exit the root shell, and then issue the 'amdump <configuration>' command to get amanda to do it's thing. Don't know much about Ops/MVS or how sophisticated it's scripting language is, but that might be the only chance for this to work. Does the version of JES you have do TCPNJE yet? If so, then compiling HUJI-NJE for Linux would let you connect and send messages to the operator console. (Just for the amusement value, this would also be a good time to do a ROI calculation for your boss on how much of your time this is costing and compare that against the price of a z/VM and DFSMS/VM license, where this would be LOTS easier...8-)) -- db
