Displaying tape volume id from backup scripts 2

[bfogarty]

I want to display a tape volume id in the output of several backup jobs but have not found a way to do so. We run nightly backups that select tapes from specific cells in an IBM Magstar MP 3570 tape subsystem. My jobs use "backup", "mksysb", and "savevg" to write various UNIX AIX files to tape, but the volume id does not show in the output. I know that utility "tapeutil" enables me to show an entire inventory of the ten volumes in the tape magazine, but I only want the id of the volume each job is using. Is there a simple way to show the volume id?
Thank you,
BF

 

[thebigone]

No. Essentially, the utilities you are using, mksysb,
backup and savevg, do not create volids on the tape.

I have seen documentation where folks manually place a volid on the tape and the "skip" past this record and continue with their backup jobs. Unfortunately, mksysb
is very specific about where it's data is placed on the tape. For boot purposes.... etc.

Going to a Library Management software package such as TSM
for backups is a solution, but not presently for mksysb's.

 

[caldiver]

mksysb does require the boot image as the first block on the tape so you can't have any type of label preceeding it. Storix Backup Administrator for AIX creates bootable/instalable backups more complete than mksysb (includes optional raw lvs, multiple VGs, etc) and puts its own labels on tapes, even bootable tapes. You can't read the labels with tapeutil, but SBA keeps its own labels containing all of the backups, tape volume ids, etc for the tape set, and also allows you to read tape header of each volume to see the backup set it belongs to, volume number, tape label id, etc.

You will need to use the 3570 in sequential mode and turn off the "autoloader" option in SMIT to allow SBA to do its own volume changes. This will work even with the free software version but you'll need the commercial version to use tape labels and other stuff. Check out

http://www.storix.com

for downloads.