During an off-list discussion with Donna G. about tar tapes, I discovered that
you can alter the console message that you get for a tape mount request.

If you try to tar to /dev/tape, you'll get a console message that looks like:

?13:53/#S2828/979/IS "TAPE" ON LDEV#7 (Y/N)?

Experimentation revealed that "TAPE" is taken from the basename portion of
the device file name.

So if I wanted to cause the console prompt to be for "MYTAPE", I could create
my own temporary device file with the desired name, and tar to that.

Here's the solution in CI format:

xeq mknod.pub.sys "/tmp/MYTAPE.!HPPIN c 0 7"
xeq tar.hpbin.sys "cvf /tmp/MYTAPE.!HPPIN UDC"
purgelink /tmp/MYTAPE.!HPPIN

The reference to !HPPIN uniqifies the device file name, just in case multiple
people want to use the same name prefix at the same time.  The console prompt
will only be for "MYTAPE", and not the numeric uniqifier.

Here's the solution in sh format:

/bin/mknod /tmp/MYTAPE.$$ c 0 7
/bin/tar cvf /tmp/MYTAPE.$$ UDC
/bin/rm /tmp/MYTAPE.$$

Like !HPPIN in the CI version, $$ is just another process-based uniqifier.

PS: I think HPPIN only became available on a post-5.5 PowerPatch tape.
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               Voice: +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)