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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, or fax them to 512.331.3807.

Edited by John Burke

We have been encountering the following error almost every night on our backup jobs:
STORE ENCOUNTERED MEDIA WRITE ERROR ON LDEV 7 (S/R 1454)
...
WARNING: STORE EXPERIENCED ERROR WHILE MARKING MEDIA BAD ON LDEV 7 (S/R 1466)
SPECIFICALLY, STORE RECEIVED ERROR -100 FROM SUBSYS TS_TAPE_DEVICE_CONTROL (S/R 1556)
We’re not sure if this is our tape drive going bad, our tapes getting too old or what. The System is a 979/400 running MPE/ix 5.5 and the drive is an HP DDS3 DAT24i drive. The drive is about 6 years old. It does get cleaned regularly. Our tapes in rotation are fairly old, too. However, we are receiving this error even when we use brand new tapes. The new tapes, however, are Fuji media, not HP like our old ones. I don’t know if the drive can tell the difference. What should we do?

John Burke replies:
Replace the drive. DDS drives are notorious for failing. I have never had a DDS drive come close to lasting through six years of daily use, so you should consider yourself lucky. Also, the drive cannot tell whether or not you are using HP branded tapes. I’ve used Fuji DDS tapes and have found them to be just as good as HP branded tapes (note that HP does not actually manufacture the tapes). I have also gotten into the habit of replacing DDS tapes after about 25 uses. When compared to the value of a backup, this is a small expense to pay.

On Samba 2.0.10 I’m seeing a new oddity, the Samba JSMAIN process goes busy for 30 seconds, then goes idle for 30 seconds, then goes busy, etc. Below is an example taken from the display of Glance on an otherwise idle system. Why is this happening?

HPB1787 B.11.10 HP GlancePlus/iX 13:05:41 Global

Guy Paul and Denis St-Amand reply:
Based on your version of Glance, B.11.10, you need to upgrade your Glance version to B.11.14 via patch GLAMX80C for 7.0. There are known issues with your version of Glance reporting bogus JSMAIN garbage. This is a Store-only patch so can be installed without downtime.

What is the JINETD setup information for that includes the newlink commands?

Mark Bixby replies:
Creating INETDCNF.NET.SYS as the real config file and /etc/inetd.conf as the symlink is the documented way to do it:

In general, you want the files in @.NET.SYS to be real files and the “alias” names in /etc or /usr/adm to be symlinks.

MPEX has a way to display symbolic links and target files (e.g. %listf /etc/@(islink),2). Is there any way to do this in “pure” MPE?

John Burke replies:
Use the following command
listfile /etc/@,7;seleq=[object=symlink]
********************
FILE: /etc/bootpd

SYMLINK TARGET: /SYS/NET/BOOTPD

Where can I find a list of HP DLT libraries and what version of MPE can drive them?

Denys Beauchemin replies:
Actually, no libraries are supported on MPE in random mode. While autoloaders can easily be made to work quite well on the HP 3000, one requires specialized software in order to make use of the full functionality of a DLT library. What is important from an HP 3000 point of view is as follows:

• The tape drives in the library must be supported on MPE and can be connected to the 3000. This means the drives must be DDS or DLT4000, DLT7000 and DLT8000. If the system is an HSC (pre-PCI) architecture, the drives must be HVD SCSI. If the system is a PCI system (A- or N-Class,) the drives can also be LVD.

• The connection to the library robot or picker, must also be supported on the 3000, again HSC needs HVD and PCI can do LVD or HVD.

• Finally you must have software that will connect to the picker and drive it. This software can either be running on MPE or on another system, to which the picker is connected. MPE itself cannot drive a robotic library.

I went to the HP 3000 Jazz Web site to get the latest sendmail and can’t locate a download link. Does this imply that one must now be on HP support to get the latest ?

Mark Landon replies:
That version of sendmail is available as a patch download for 7.0. The same patch also apparently works for 6.5. MPE/iX 7.5 includes this version of sendmail in the FOS.