DEAN@engvax.UUCP (09/12/85)
Several people recently mentioned that they were having problems with a subprocess that allocated a device, then mounted it, dismounted it, and then tried to deallocate the device. I have a friend at Xerox who had the same problem, and sent in a SPR about it. Surprisingly enough, he got a reply. Text follows. SPR ANSWER FORM SPR Number: 11CS01400 System: VMS Version: 4.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT: If a user executes the following sequence of commands: $ SPAWN $ ALLOCATE HSC015$MUA0 $ MOUNT HSC015$MUA0 DOOF $ DISMOUNT HSC015$MUA0 the subprocess which originally allocated the tape drive no longer has possession of it. Instead, the tape drive is allocated to the parent process. This inhibits use of the tape drive by the child after the first mounting. RESPONSE: Thank you for your SPR. In VAX/VMS Version 4.0, we made a deliberate change to MOUNT to make the default (private) mount be job wide, rather than per process. This was done in response to substantial customer input that this was more useful for the majority of applications. Having ownership of the device not revert to the subprocess is an unfortunate asymmetry that results from this change. In particular, it means that a sequence of ALLOCATE, MOUNT, DISMOUNT, and DEALLOCATE from a subprocess does not work. We will investigate correcting this problem in a future update to VAX/VMS. END OF SPR RESPONSE So DEC knows about it, and maybe they will fix it. Dean Stephan Hughes Aircraft Company