This Frequently Asked Question list for the ADSM-L mailing list is posted on the first day of each month. It was created to cut down on the number of questions that are repeated regularly in the ADSM-L mailing list from vm.marist.edu. I would be grateful for any requests to include additional material. (Please send them directly to me, rather than to the list.)
updated 3/1/2005 ==================================================== Questions marked with # are new or improved since the last posting. QUESTIONS Sections 01 and 02 01. About the list itself 01-01. How do I subscribe to ADSM-L? 01-02. How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L? 01-03. Why don't I see the questions I post to ADSM-L? 01-04. How can I see the questions I post to ADSM-L? 01-05. Who decides what questions go on ADSM-L? 01-06. Is there a digest or archive of ADSM-L? 01-07. How do I get more information about ADSM-L? 01-08. Does IBM/Tivoli participate in ADSM-L? 01-09 How can I get just a digest of ADSM-L, instead of all the postings? 02. Types of questions asked 02-01. What subjects are covered in this list? 02-02. What kinds of questions can be asked? 02-03. What kinds of questions can I expect answers to? 02-04. What levels of netiquette are expected? 02-05. What's the first thing to do when I have a question about TSM? 02-06. What's the second thing to do when I have a question about TSM? 02-07. What's the third thing to do when I still have a question about TSM? 02-08. What's the fourth thing to do when I STILL have a question about TSM? 02-09. What's the fifth thing to do when I *STILL* have a question about TSM? 02-10. What's the last thing to do when I *STILL* have a question about TSM? 02-11. What are those "out of office" messages I keep seeing in the list? 02-12. What's the single best thing I can do to improve the list? 02-13. Why don't I get answers to my "I need comparisons between TSM and <brandX> backup software" questions? 02-14. What kinds of things shouldn't I post on ADSM-L? 02-15. Is there some sort of acronym list? 02-16. Whatever happened to Richard Sims? 03. Available TSM resources 03-01. What FAQs are already out there? 03-02. What other sources of help can I find? 03-03. How do I get "official" TSM support? ANSWERS to section 01-03 01-01. How do I subscribe to ADSM-L? Send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a blank subject line and a message consisting only of the line SUBSCRIBE ADSM-L. 01-02. How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L? Send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a blank subject line and a message consisting only of the line UNSUBSCRIBE ADSM-L. Do NOT try to unsubscribe by sending email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] All that does is annoy the list members, and it doesn't get you unsubscribed. 01-03. Why don't I see the questions I post to ADSM-L? That's the normal behavior of ADSM-L. 01-04. How can I see the questions I post to ADSM-L? If you want to see your own questions, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a blank subject line and a message that consists only of the line SET ADSM-L REPRO. 01-05. Who decides what questions go on ADSM-L? The list members. There appears to be no active moderation of the list. (That's not a license to abuse the list. Complaints from the list members are heeded by the list administrator.) 01-06. Is there a digest or archive of ADSM-L? Indeed. There are two indexed versions of the mailing list. The first is at http://search.adsm.org; the other one is http://www.mail-archive.com/adsm-l@vm.marist.edu/. (Thanks, Richard!) Personally, I prefer the latter; the former's indexing leaves a lot to be desired, and its message threading is practically non-existent. 01-07. How do I get more information about ADSM-L? Send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a blank subject line and a message consisting only of the line INFO. This will cause an email to be returned to you with a list of documents available about the listserver and instructions on how to get them. 01-08. Does IBM/Tivoli participate in or post to ADSM-L? >From Andy Raibeck, of the TSM client development group: "This list server is owned and operated by Marist College, and is not in any way affiliated with IBM. While some IBMers do participate on ADSM-L, they do so on an unofficial, voluntary basis, and thus are not *required* to answer your questions. If you require an answer from IBM, or if your situation is of an urgent nature, then you should (also) go through IBM's official support channels for assistance." 01-09 How can I get just a digest of ADSM-L, instead of all the postings? (from Andy Raibeck) Send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the email, put *only* the following: info refcard You do not need a subject line. You will get reference information back from the list server that tells you, among other things, how to configure your subscription to receive the daily digest. 02-01. What subjects are covered in this list? Officially, only questions concerning the installation, configuration, care, and feeding of ADSM/TSM/ITSM should appear. However, since backup and recovery systems cover a wide range of IT and business issues, there have been discussions about disaster recovery, tape and other storage systems, and other Tivoli products (such as Storage Network Manager and Storage Resource Manager). Keep it centered around TSM, and no one fusses much. 02-02. What kinds of questions can be asked? You can ask pretty much any TSM-related question you care to. There's no guarantee you'll get an answer, though. Reposting an already-asked question (because of initial lack of response) will sometimes get you an answer, but often it'll get you nothing. 02-03. What kinds of questions can I expect answers to? As with any other mailing list, the questions that lend themselves to short, concise answers are the ones most likely to get answered. As an example, you're much more likely to get an answer to "Does my new tape library, model ZYX-666 made by Spelvin Corporation, work with TSM version 4.2?" than "I just got TSM. How do I use it?" Keep your questions focused and narrow in scope. (You can always ask more questions later.) See answers to questions 02-05, 02-06, and 02-07. 02-04. What levels of netiquette are expected? The standard civility is expected. If you're unsure of netiquette rules, go to http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html and http://www.fau.edu/netiquette/net/index.html. 02-05. What's the first thing to do when I have a question about TSM? Read this FAQ, particular section 4. 02-06. What's the second thing to do when I have a question about TSM? The second thing to do is to go to Richard Sims' exhaustive TSM FAQ at http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ADSM.QuickFacts. More about online FAQs in answer 03-01. 02-07. What's the third thing to do when I still have a question about TSM? The third thing to do is to look for similar questions in the ADSM-L archives found at http://search.adsm.org. Chances are that your question has been asked before by someone else. Using the proper keywords to find relevant responses is a bit of an art, but it is a rich source of information. 02-08 What's the fourth thing to do when I STILL have a question about TSM? [Thanks to Taz for this one.] Check the Knowledge Base. If you haven't registered before, go to: http://www-120.ibm.com/software/support/ecare/login?action=register You can then log into the knowledge base at: http://www-3.ibm.com/software/sysmgmt/products/support/IBMTivoliStorageM anager.html 02-09. What's the fifth thing to do when I STILL have a question about TSM? Research the Administrator's Guide, the Administrator's Reference, the client guides, or the relevant IBM Redbooks. Yeah, I know, it's not easy reading. Search the .PDF version of the relevant manual (see answer 03-02 for the download locations); the answer's probably in there somewhere. (last one, I promise) 02-10. What's the last thing to do when I *STILL* have a question about TSM? Post it to the list, and always include all key information. Such information should always include server level (found in the top banner of the login administrative web page), client level (from the Help-->About TSM splash screen in the client GUI), TSM server OS and OS level (include service pack/maintenance level data), an *exact* description of the problem, an extract of the server activity log, and the error messages verbatim. Please cut and paste text from messages; this makes typos much less likely. Confusion reigns when you commit a typo in your question; you'll get a flood of "you've misspelled your command" answers, which is probably not what you're looking for. 02-11. What are those "out of office" messages I keep seeing in the list? Some email clients have a clever little feature that can be set to tell those who send email to a recipient that the recipient will be out (and will thus not be immediately responsive). Unfortunately, some people don't know how to configure these clients not to send such messages to mailing lists. What is most annoying about these messages is that they can appear in multiple languages, which makes filtering them out a frustrating task. 02-12. What's the single best thing everyone can do to improve the list? Trim your replies! Trim back what you quote from the previous poster to the essential information only. Get rid of the greetings, the .sigs, and the chatty stuff. (This measure alone could cut half the length of a download.) 02-13. Why don't I get answers to my "I need comparisons between TSM and <brandX> backup software" questions? While there are occasional responses to these questions, they are ignored for the most part. The ADSM-L list concerns itself with TSM only. Most of the list members don't know <brandX> well enough to do good comparisons; a lot of us don't care. There is one clue, however, to what backup application to use: we see *lots* of sites/customers moving from <brandX> to TSM; we see very few of them moving in the other direction. 02-14. What kinds of things shouldn't I post on ADSM-L? a. Questions about subjects other than TSM or TSM-related issues. There are lots of mailing lists out there; start looking for the one you need at http://www.lsoft.com/catalist.html. b. Advertisements. (Testimonials are okay as long as they're disinterested testimonials. IOW, if you are the chief architect for spammo.com, don't sing the praises of Spammo.) Let your product speak for itself. c. "Send it to me, too!" responses. (There should be a special level of Hell for people who do this.) For pity's sake, if you want something from someone, email them directly. Please review the answer 02-04 above. 02-15. Is there some sort of acronym list? ADSM = Adstar Distributed Storage Manager DR = disaster recovery ITSM = IBM/Tivoli Storage Manager TDP = Tivoli Data Protection TSM = Tivoli Storage Manager ITSMOR = IBM/Tivoli Storage Manager Operational Reporter ISC = Integrated Solutions Center 02-16. Whatever happened to Richard Sims? Richard is back! The gods of ADSM-L have smiled upon him again. 03-01. What FAQs are already out there? There are a few (including this one), but the brightest star in the firmament is Richard Sims' page at http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ADSM.QuickFacts. It is organized by keyword, it is *exhaustive*, and it is updated frequently. 03-02. What other sources of help can I find? There are several sources of valuable help for TSM problems. 1) The ADSM-L mailing list is a good resource; however, like most mailing lists, you must separate the answers from those who know from the answers of those who don't. The best way to do that is to read it frequently; you'll soon learn who hits the nail with the hammer most often. 2) The same caution extends the ADSM-L online archive at http://search.adsm.org. This archive is indexed and searchable, although personal experience shows that the search function could use some work. 3) Tivoli maintains extensive official documentation on all TSM products. You can find Tivoli documents, in PDF and HTML format, at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/tividd/td/tdprodlist.html. 4) If it's a server command you're having problems with, run the command with the word "help" (without the quotes) in front of it (such as HELP UPDATE STGPOOL) at the administrative command-line. TSM will echo back a help file with syntax, flag definitions, examples, and similar command lists. Neat! 5) Tivoli technical support, although not as fast to respond as in past times, is still one of the best technical support lines in the market today. The telephone number is 800.848.6548. You will need your Tivoli customer number, which you should have gotten when you purchased TSM, and the name of the 'official' contact person designated when the order for TSM was placed; without both, they will not be able to help you. 6) Check the Knowledge Base. If you haven't registered before, go to: http://www-120.ibm.com/software/support/ecare/login?action=register You can then log into the knowledge base at: http://www-3.ibm.com/software/sysmgmt/products/support/IBMTivoliStorageM anager.html 7) IBM maintains a documentation system called Redbooks. Redbooks are rather like O'Reilly Publishing's "missing manuals"; they contain information that doesn't make it into the standard software manuals. There is a lot of good TSM information in some of them. You can find redbooks in .PDF format at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com. WARNING: Redbook information is not "official" IBM documentation, and official support is not predicated upon them. 8) You can access a lot of information about TSM problems by going to www.ibm.com, typing relevant text strings in the "Search" text box at the top of the page, and pressing the "GO" button. This is a particularly easy way to find relevant APAR information about fixes to TSM code. (Tip o' the hat to Mr. Sims for this one.) 03-03. How do I get "official" TSM support? As I understand it, those who buy TSM receive support and maintenance from Tivoli for one year from date of purchase. After that, support must be purchased. Contact your Tivoli reseller for details. -- Mark Stapleton ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Office 262.521.5627