RAC Consulting Sponsor Message

Hidden Value details commands and procedures in MPE that can improve your productivity with HP 3000 systems. Send your tips to john@burke-consulting.com.

Edited by John Burke

Can we use one of the new DAT 72 drives with a HP 3000 A-Class systems, and is it possible to boot from the drive?

Goetz Neumann replies:

DAT72 is equivalent to DDS-5. The answers to the questions are “no” and “no.” DDS-5 is not supported or certified yet.

I do echo <esc>H to do a “home up.” This works fine, except that the echo command does an automatic LF CR after it sends the “home” escape sequence to the terminal [emulator]. The net result is that, instead of getting the cursor at “home,” I get the cursor “one line below home.” Any tricks for asking echo to NOT issue the LF CR? Alternatively, is there another way to specify “home” (not programmatically but from the MPE/iX CI)?

Ted Bochan and Keven Miller reply:

Use the command

INPUT X;PROMPT=chr(27)+”H”;READCNT=0, or, equivalently

INPUT X;PROMPT=”![chr(27)]H”;READCNT=0

We changed our backups from DLT4000 to DLT8000. Is there a utility on the HP e3000 to erase, reformat, and re-initialize DLT tapes so that the DLT8000 will not “switch” to the DLT4000 “compatibility mode” automatically?

Thomas Root replies:

When you mount a (DLT IV) tape that was previously written on a DLT4000 drive, press the density override button to select 40 Gb compressed and then write to the tape. Once it has been written on the DLT8000 it will automatically select the higher density.

I’ve recently discovered that DDS tapes store information about themselves, including some error stats and use count. I would like to use this information to help manage our tapes (discard after so many uses, etc.) but am having trouble accessing the information. Searching the 3000-L archives and the ITRC reveals that the information (the “Tape Log”) can be viewed using the expert SCSI tool in cstm, or the SCSIDDS tool in SYSDIAG; but both of these require passwords that I don’t have. Are there any other tools to access the tape log?

Goetz Neumann replies:

As far as I know, no. However, if your DDS is an external model, you could get yourself a SCSI card for a PC and use the LTT (Library and Tape Tools), which you can download from www.hp.com. It is available for Windows (I checked for XP) and Linux RedHat [at h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ltt/index.html]. I have not checked it in detail, but I think the LTT has at least the same diagnostic features as cstm, including firmware management.

[Editor’s note: The password-protected diagnostic tools have been a sore point for years with HP 3000 customers. Many list members were around when HP’s Rich Sevcik promised this would not happen. Of course, he is long gone, but the passwords remain. If you have support from HP, you can get the passwords, but even that may not help. Sometime early in the release cycle for MPE/iX 6.0, SCSIDDS stopped being able to read the tape log. Try as I might I could never get HP to address the issue, at least in part because it was planning to change to cstm with MPE/iX 6.5. I never got around to trying cstm because I did not have an MPE/iX 6.5 or greater system on support at the time. HP has indicated a willingness to do something about the passwords at end of support.]

Is there any way to see a file label’s create, modify, etc. times down to the second? We are trying to determine if certain files are being FTP’d up to us in the correct order. Unfortunately a listf only shows to the minute and all are the same.

James Reynolds replies:

Use FINFO parameter -60 for the create time as an integer in the form HHMMSS.

Is there a way to force FINFO to report on only temp files? I am trying to bulletproof a command-file that is supposed to work on a temp file. There should not be a permanent file of the same name, but I am trying to be sure.

Stan Sieler replies:

Use these commands

:file xx, oldtemp
:calc finfo (“*xx”, “exists”)

Note the “*” in the filename given to FINFO. If no temp “xx” exists, I get “FALSE” regardless of whether or not a perm “xx” exists.

How do I retrieve the local node name programmatically? I do not want to have to hard code the node name value into the program I am writing.

Keven Miller replies:

NSINFO items 18 and 19 (docs.hp.com/mpeix/onlinedocs/36920-90008/36920-90008.html).