If it's not too late to make requests...   How about fixing whatever causes
our tape drive to hang about 2 or 3 times a year.  HP seems to think it is
tied in with the ghost-session problem that others have mentioned..  Might be,
but we never have anything hang except the tape drive.

Details from last night's hang:
A500,  MPE 7.5 pp2 (just updated Saturday),  DDS-3, an old tape (used about 20
times with no prior problems)
Drive now shows as 'UNAVAIL', owned by 'SYS'.
Backup ran normally.  Finished 11:05 pm.
Drive failed to come back on line.  Backup job noticed the drive was
"UNAVAIL", waited about 10 times longer than it usually takes, then started
the verify anyway, at 11:16 pm.
Verify said "DEVICE UNAVAILABLE  (FSERR 55)" and " VSTORE ENCOUNTERED FOPEN
FAILURE ON DEVICE FILE "T"  (S/R 2213)".  Then it just sat there.
At 2:51 a watchdog job concluded that the backup job was hung, did a showdev 7
(it was 'UNAVAIL', owned by 'SYS', issued a few abortios on it (but never got
the "no io to abort" message), then abortjobed it.  Job aborted ok first time.

This morning I fed it ever-increasing abortio while-loops, and finally got the
'no io to abort' message after about 2,600 total abortios.  But that does not
mean that there were 2600 ios to abort.  If I do a single abortio at the
console, I still don't get the 'no io to abort' message.  Further while loops
in jobs with no pauses seem get the warning after between 50 & several hundred
repetitions.  2600 just happens to be how many total tests it took for me to
get impatient enough to feed it a big enough while-loop with no pauses.  Tape
drive is STILL 'UNAVAIL', owned by 'SYS'.

Dave ("planning to reboot tonight") Powell,  MMfab

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