> The tape support should be in place to my knowledge. What's missing is > the tape management piece.
Correct. > Of course we could consider writing a driver that applies tape library > functions for VTS but without any tape management software on top it > would only be a piece of technology. I.e. if there is any outlook for > an exploiter we can consider putting in onto the requirements list. A simple exploiter is 'mtx'. That's where all other Unix/Linux tape control function lives. Most applications that care about such things call 'mtx' to do the actual work. > But then the tape library API may not be published causing implementation > delays and possibly you could instead attach to the VTS through FCP, too > and use TSM support off the box. Until native SCSI tape support is in the plan for VM, VSE and z/OS, this will be a hard case to make, even if the device and library can support multiple interfaces simultaneously. Switching back and forth from FCP to channel-attached is awkward and operationally a non-starter. Of course you could build the interface code into TSM to deal with channel-attached tape. That's already OCO, and there's your exploiter...8-) > That way you wouldn't have to hold your > breath while we figure out how to deliver on your requirement validating > with more customers such that we understand its general market importance > and push it into plans eventually - still awaiting tape management > exploitation ... Thoughts? See suggestion to base the Linux part of the changer interface on IUCV to the VM DFSMS or via TCP to z/OS DFSMS. AFAIK, both are published interfaces, and you can continue to hide the gory details of how to actually work the device w/o tainting the kernel. Possible implementation: provide a back end to the generic SCSI device (sg) driver to translate the generic SCSI tape management commands into the right IUCV or TCP primitives for DFSMS. Then you need no user space mods for existing tape-aware apps, and TSM can just use it as-is. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
