On Thursday, 06/12/2003 at 05:50 MST, Jim Sibley/San Jose/[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I think we might be confusing several issues
I think everyone has a good understanding of the issues, Jim. A requirment to unload/reload the device driver is a non-starter and voids all of the dynamic device support. To add a tape you must take all other tapes out of service. That isn't a good strategy. Do you agree with that? The point with shared tapes, whether it is a logical or physical sharing, is that there is *something* under program and/or user control to say "This is mine until I say it is not". That function is the thing that must issue the assign/unassign. (I beg everyone not to call it "attach" or "detach"... those words imply a change in the host device configuration...assign/unassign do not change the configuration.) I think that Mr. Boyes is on the right track. This is a function that any platform that wants to maintain a static device configuration, but allow a device to go into "away" state will want. There is no need for a special mainframe-specific paradigm that is somehow imbedded in the driver. As David said, define a new "reserve/release" ioctl() that will do this and let the apps (e.g. mt) deal with it. Alan Altmark Sr. Software Engineer IBM z/VM Development
