I would start with a non-programming solution: check your tape catalog (you do have one, don't you?) for who wrote/owns which tapes. From there you can either know immediately what's on the tape (eg. if it is owned by VMBACKUP) or request that the tape owner tell you what is on it.
Somewhere there should be a record of "if I want data XYA I need to mount tape 123 and use process ABC to read it". Without that your, tape librar y is not much use to start with. So use that information to your advantage to avoid mouting thousands of tapes. Brian Nielsen On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:42:54 -0400, Wayne T Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I've been asked to figure out what we have in our inventory of VM and >VSE tapes, in preparation for moving to "new" drives/media. > >I'm expecting to write a PIPE that will do the required summary, more or >less iterating to a final solution by operators will be able to use on >our inventory of a few thousand tapes. > >Some of the expected formats include CMS and VSE labeled, unlabeled >created mostly here, but with some that may have been created elsewhere. >CMS formats include "standard" blocked & unblocked", tape, vmfplc2, and >various other CMS "TAPE" command local formats such as very old >"Perkin-Elmer" compressed format and other 800-byte block file systems. >In addition, I'll be recognizing specific formats such as SPSS system >files, SPTAPE, etc. > >Does anyone have a starting point I might use in place of a >bigger-than-I-want-project? ;-) > >cheers, wayne >U Maine System >(6 or 7 of 8 to 10 years into dismantling our VM system) >======================== ========================= ========================
