[212] in Athena_Backup_System
automatic tape labeling
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Diane Delgado)
Tue Mar 12 13:09:48 1996
To: athena-backup@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 13:09:38 EST
From: Diane Delgado <delgado@MIT.EDU>
Hi everyone,
I need your input about the autolabeling and how to generate
external labels.
Here's the scenario:
Slave detects a blank tape during a dump operation.
It issues a call to the master to generate a new tape label
(this is a new call to be added to the ABS_SLAVEINT) interface).
The Master needs to have both an internal label and an external, human
readable label to assign to the tape in order to enter the information
into the database. Currently, the Master does not generate external
label names, and expects the operator to supply the external label
name at the time the tape is labeled.
Since we're not using the extra fancy kind of tape drive which
has bar code scanners which would allow the slave to read external
labels, we need to state how the Master will generate the external label
information and how it will tell the admin/operator what that
new external label name is. (In all cases, the operator still
has to phyiscally affix the correct external label to the correct
tape).
We can:
a. Have the master use part of the pool name (say first 4 characters)
as a prefix with the suffix (the last 4 chars) being a number.
b. Support a per-pool configurable prefix which is used to generate
external labels.
c. Something else you might think of??
Note that having the operator enter the information after the
dump completes isn't feasible since the Master needs to enter
the volume to tape mappings as part of the job completion process.
Also how and when are the operators/admins notified? As part of
the dump report for this dump? Separately?
