RS/6000 Tape questions

[Ruth Milner]

In article <1991Apr23.194408.14080 at midway.uchicago.edu> rtp1 at quads.uchicago.edu (raymond thomas pierrehumbert) writes:
>
>I couldn't find this out via info explorer either.  I had to ask my
>software engineer.  It underscores that searching in info explorer
>is not as useful as it could be.  

At no time in this brief discussion has anyone mentioned trying the following:

zuni<1>% man -k tape
rmt(1)  - Allows remote access to magnetic tape devices.
tapechk(1)      - Performs consistency checking of the streaming tape device.
tcopy(1)        - Copies a magnetic tape.
tctl(1) - Gives subcommands to a streaming tape device.
topen, tclose, tread, twrite, trewin, tskipf, tstate (3F)   - f77 tape I/O 

Building the "whatis" database is the first thing I do on any new system, and
man -k is one of the most useful ways to use the man pages. I hope this doesn't
sound like bragging, but it took me all of 5 seconds to find tctl this way. 

BTW, it isn't simply a name change, it's a rewrite with a *lot* of missing
functionality. No way to take the tape offline (like "offl" or "rewoffl"),
no way to skip to the end of recorded media ("eom"), *NO STATUS CHECK*
("status" - how on earth could they leave this one out?????).

We have found the Exabyte tape handling (don't have any other kind) to be ...
unusual ... compared to the Suns. For example, on a Sun, if you write a file
onto Exabyte, you can take it away and later on put it back in, skip to the
end of that file, and write another one. On the RS/6000, not only will it not
do this at all (I/O error), but if you take a tape with a file written on it 
by the IBM over to the Sun, the Sun won't write at the end of it any more 
either! Clearly it's writing something different, but we haven't been able
to find out what. Anybody have any clues? According to the documentation, 
they both write a double eof on close, and that doesn't really cause us any
serious problems.
-- 
Ruth Milner
Systems Manager                     NRAO/VLA                    Socorro NM
Computing Division Head      rmilner at zia.aoc.nrao.edu