Using Tapes on HP-UX Guest Systems

Displaying the Tape Configuration in HP-UX

After booting HP-UX with the virtual tape device configuration, you can use the command ioscan -C tape -fun to verify if the device was found and the driver was loaded. The following image shows an example:

The example shows two type devices and their associated special devices.

The lssf command can be used to verify that the special files point to the correct device paths, SCSI target ID and LUN.

Loading and Ejecting the Virtual Tape in HP-UX

Using the autoload Configuration Option 

If autoload has been enabled in the configuration, the virtual tape is "loaded" and the container file created, if required, when the tape device is accessed.

Please note: Multi-volume backup software may not work correctly when autoload is enabled. If a new tape is requested by the software, it will not wait for a new tape to load but overwrite the existing file. If data is to be written to several tapes, this needs to be implemented manually (e.g., by a customized script).

For example, the following command will cause the container file for device /dev/rmt/0mnb (default tape device) to be created and opened:

The tape can be "ejected" by setting it to offline (device-name is the full path to the special file):

After the offline command, the container file can be removed (i.e., the tape can be archived).

To simulate the "swapping" of tapes, use the sequence:

• Release a loaded tape so its container file can be moved away: mt -f <devicename> offl
• Write to the tape as required (this will create a new container file, if needed).
• Release the loaded tape so its container file can be moved away: mt -f <devicename> offl

Using Manual Tape Loading from the PA9 Console

In some cases it may be useful to load/unload tapes manually from the pa9-64 or pa9-32 console instead of using autoload. This is achieved by the following command (using PA9-64 as an example):

Load a tape:

Unload a tape:

Where MKXnnn stands for the virtual tape configuration name, for example, MKA500.

If no tape is "loaded" in the virtual tape device, the command

mt -f <device-name> status

will show a status of 0.

Reading and Writing Tapes in HP-UX

There are several commands that can be used to write data to / read data from the virtual tapes, for example,

• tar
• fbackup/frecover
• dump/restore
• vxdump/vxrestore

Please refer to your HP-UX documentation for details about the usage of these utilities.