I would start with a non-programming solution: look in your tape catalog to see who wrote/owns each tape. That will either tell you directly the
format of the data (eg. the tape was written by VMBACKUP) or where/who to query further for that information. Somewhere there needs to be a record of "if I want data XYZ I need to mount tape 123 and use process ABC to read it". Without that, your tape library is not very useful. So use that information to your advantage to avoid mounting 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) >======================== ========================= ========================
