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mt(1) can't differentiate between an unloaded drive and a drive which
has a tape in it but hasn't been ejected yet. maybe this is a hardware
limitiation. I can understand that.
I've got a tape changer. I've got control over it via chio(1). it
works great. I can load and unload tapes from slots and drives. it
blocks if the picker is busy, as desired. however, dump(8) has no way
to integrate with chio(1), other than prompting for the next tape:
DUMP: Is the new volume mounted and ready to go?: ("yes" or "no")
all the IOCTLS exist to completely map the availability of an additional
tape in the library, yet dump has no support for them.
"-e" ejects a tape when a change is required, but since we can't
differentiate between an empty drive and an unloaded drive, this is
useless.
"-l timeout" ejects a tape and waits for the drive to be available
again, "to be used with tape changers which automatically load the next
tape when the tape is ejected." which doesn't apply here, since the
changer isn't of the autofeeding variety.
to get this working as desired it seems like I need to write a wrapper
around dump which parses its output and makes calls out to chio to do
tape changes when necessary.
there's got to be a less hateful way.
--
Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
"silly brewer, saaz are for pils!" -- virt
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