SYSRUTH@UTORPHYS.BITNET.UUCP (06/19/87)
There was a session at this spring's DECUS in Nashville on tape handling (sponsored I believe by the large systems SIG as the white paper Brent Sterner mentioned was read). There was someone from DEC present, taking notes and discussing problems and possible solutions. However, a friend at the session informed me that the same DECy had been at a similar session at a DECUS 2 years earlier, also taking notes and discussing problems, and that nothing had ever come of it. So I am not holding my breath waiting for tape enhancements. One solution to Brent's problem of people leaving loaded tapes on unallocated tape drives would be to not allow the /nounload qualifier on dismount *unless* the tape drive had actually been ALLOCated. That way still-loaded tapes would only be found on allocated tape drives. Or perhaps OPER privilege or something similar could be required. Real operators could also be instructed not to mount a tape on an unallocated drive (if you *have* real operators; here, everyone is their own). Is it possible to remove the /nounload qualifier from the DCLTABLES with SET COMMAND/DELETE, or does it have to be a full command? If you have that VERB program that keeps getting mentioned, Brent, you could extract DISMOUNT, modify it to remove /nounload, and then reapply it. I personally find it a very useful command, though. How about writing a small command file so that MOUNT actually does ALLOCATE and then MOUNT? And one for DISMOUNT/UNLOAD to deallocate it (so that /nounload leaves it allocated)? Would that help? Anyway, those are some ideas I had. It's not something I've thought a lot about. Since everyone here mounts their own tapes, it really isn't a problem for me. Ruth Milner Systems Manager University of Toronto Physics SYSRUTH@UTORPHYS