Adding tape devices to the systems emulated by Charon-PAR is a process consisting of several steps:

Link the tape container files and/or physical tape devices with the corresponding configuration paths in the Charon configuration file and load the devices.
Enable the tape for use by the guest operating system.

The storage on the host system must provide enough capacity to store the tape containers used as virtual tapes by the emulated system.

The sections below describe the process in more detail.

1 Adding Tape Devices to the Configuration File
2 Using Tapes on MPE/iX Guest Systems
3 Using Tapes on HP-UX Guest Systems

Adding Tape Devices to the Configuration File

The new emulated tape device must be added to the configuration file of the Charon-PAR instance. This requires two commands:

		Step	Configuration file entry

		Step	Configuration file entry
1	Load the SCSI device.	`load MKXnnn`
2	Link the device with tape container file or physical tape device	`MKXnnn.image="/path/to/tape-container-file"` The path can point to an existing tape container file, but this is not mandatory. The emulator can create the container file if required. `MKXnnn.image="/dev/stN"` You can identify the Linux tape device name using the command `dmesg \|grep -i tape`. N stands for the device number, e.g., /dev/st0.
3	Enable loading the virtual tape automatically (for virtual tapes based on container file).	`MKXnnn.autoload=yes` Please note: Multi-volume backup software may not work correctly when autoload is enabled. If a new tape is requested by the software, it may not wait for a new tape to load but overwrite the existing file. If data is must be written to several tapes, this needs to be implemented manually, e.g., by a customized script. Without autoload enabled, MPE/iX can load a tape using the DEVCTRL command. There is no such option for HP-UX guest systems. The autoload command can help to overcome this deficiency. Please note the note above!

The parameter MKXnnn encodes the device type and the device path of the emulated SCSI device presented to the guest operating system:

A tape device name has the following components:

Value MK at the beginning of the device name: specifies that device type is tape.
X: value consists of an uppercase letter encoding the device path. Please refer to Emulated Model Hardware Configuration Details for system specific device path information.
Example (rp4000):
A = device path 0/0/1/0
B = device path 0/0/1/1
C = device path 0/0/2/0
D = device path 0/0/2/1
nnn: value encodes the SCSI device connected to the SCSI controller.
Formula: (SCSI target ID*100)+LUN
The LUN is always 0 for tape devices.

The following example adds a SCSI tape device with device path 0/0/1/0.6.0 (controller A, SCSI target ID 6, LUN 0) to the configuration:

load MKA600

MKA600.image="ldev7.img"

Using Tapes on MPE/iX Guest Systems

Displaying Tape Characteristics on MPE/iX Systems

You can use the SYSGEN > IO to display tape characteristics as shown in the following example for LDev 7:

Using :DEVCTRL to Load and Eject a Tape on MPE/iX Systems

:DEVCTRL is an script that allows several aspects of physical tape devices to be controlled: in-drive data compression, tape loading, and automatic tape eject. This script is also used with Charon-PAR to load virtual tape image files. When :DEVCTRL is used to load a virtual tape file, it causes Charon-PAR to create (if necessary) and open the virtual tape file configured in the Charon-PAR configuration file.

The :DEVCTRL syntax is show below:

For example, to load an emulated type device on LDev 7, use the following command:

:DEVCTRL 7; LOAD=ONLINE

Reading and Writing Tapes in MPE/iX

To read and write tapes under MPE/iX, the :STORE and :RESTORE commands are used. Please contact your Stromasys representative or partner if you need support with data backup and restore under MPE/iX.

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: