Tom,

I've been down that path before and have implemented the following 'safe
guard'.

My backup job, just before it invokes our backup utility,  streams another
job whose sole function is to 'monitor' the backup.  It checks for any
pending replies and for the elapsed time of the backup job.  If any replies
are detected it pages me while if the predetermined elapsed time is
exceeded it will perform a series of 'abortio' against the 'ldevs' of the
tape drives and thus cause the backup utility to terminate and thus the
backup job can continue and bring up the system.  It also notifies me, by
e-mail, of the action taken.  The ldev numbers, elapsed time threshold and
other information are 'passed' to the monitor job by having the backup job
write them into a file as 'setvar' commands and having the monitor job
execute said file.

I can make that 'monitor' job available, if you are interested.

Regards
Paul Christidis






Well, last night it happened again. The system backup (STORE)  is
automatically scheduled every night (M-F), but someone (me) has to put in a
tape sometime during the day for the backup that night. And most of the
time, I do just that. But, I was focused elsewhere and forgot. That means
that the backup job tied up all the files and sat there hung, waiting for
the tape that never arrived. Which means that early this morning, a user
was
unable to logon and enter an invoice and print required bar code labels for
a shipment that went out early this morning. That also meant that the
nightly update didn't run (not a huge problem once in a while) and reports
for users weren't printed and ready this morning. Not a good morning.

What I'm wondering is this. Short of purchasing the version of STORE that
backs up while the system is being used, is there some way, in a job, to
test to see if a tape is online or not and based on that test, decide
whether to run the job or not?

Another option, I guess, would be to make the system backup a manual
operation that is performed when I put the tape in. Any other options?  TIA

Tom Hula
Victor S. Barnes Company