[157] in Athena_Backup_System
minutes for 12/21/95
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathon Weiss)
Thu Dec 21 16:27:53 1995
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 95 16:30:37 EST
From: jweiss@MIT.EDU (Jonathon Weiss)
To: athena-backup@MIT.EDU
ABS minutes for 12/21/95
Present: delgado, bwmelans, jweiss | wdc
Tape format:
we were going to use EOF to mean the end of a file, but some
tapes use EOF to mean EOM. We can seek to the next inter-record gap.
Proposal : control records (headers) 512 bytes, data 126x512 bytes.
If you try to read the wrong size record you will get an error.
(which is why we choose consistant sizes) also 512 is chosen, because
some devices need that. problems: there will be some wasted space at
the end of some records, slower than being able to seek to EOF even on
devices that support EOF "correctly" Diane points out that this might
not be any slower than what we're doing now, unless Transarc has come
up witha better solution. Yes, this is a reasonable solution.
new volume footer: contains good or bad and dump size. Anything else?
definition: if the volume footer can't be read, the dump is not good.
This removes the need for a tape footer, so we are eliminating it.
Diane will update the tape slave spec and people shoud read thru this
section. Diane will send mail when it is updated, so people will know
when they can review it.
We need to talk about handeling media errors at a future meeting.
The overview doc.
comments noted in jweiss' draft (here are the highlights)
new section on crippled mode
new section on revision history
Req. appendex will be added when it is done
we need to decide archive data goes
We need to decide if we are supporting exception dumpsets
Where are the coding guidelines, jweiss will ping vrt.
wdc wants to make a change to this:
add documentation about comments preceeding each function.
specifically variables which are value returned are noted
args that are modified and valid return values
vrt's req's doc still needs a lot of work, but we are postponing this
discussion, since vrt isn't here
Diane would like people to look thru the discussion of error
distribution in the master spec.
wdc still has action item to find right set of AFS libraries to link.
Do we want meet next week? Yes
Agenda:
Review req's (unless vrt is out)
Discuss handling of media errors
wdc is out 15-17 (includes 1/11)
