Re: Any ideas to deal with a VMBACKUP problem?

--- In [email protected], "dhdurgee" <dhdurgee@...> wrote:
>
> Given my desire to eventually run on Hercules, I decided to see if I am seeing the same behavior with VMBACKUP on Hercules.  I can now report that I see the same behavior under Hercules with an AWSTAPE virtual tape that I see on my P/370 with VMBACKUP.  So it appears that the AWSTAPE emulated behavior is identical in both environments.
> 
> In attempting to further diagnose this I ran a CP TRACE of what was going on with the following results:
> 
> I/O 03ECDE SIOF  9C011000  TAPE 0310  CC 0  TAPE 0581  CAW 0028AD98
> CCW 28AD98 0428AD3C 20000018  FA9328 043EDD3C 20800018
> *** E51D5E I/O   0310 ==> 026694  CSW 0C00
> 
> This was captured on my P/370, but I suspect I would get identical results on Hercules.  I am not a programmer at this level, so I cannot interpret what I am seeing above.  Can someone give me an idea what VMBACKUP is attempting to do here, and why it would be happy with the results of such an operation on a real tape drive and not an AWSTAPE emulated drive?
> 
> Any assistance is welcome at this point.  I can expect no assistance from VMBACKUP support, so if AWSTAPE support is working properly I guess I am going to need to patch the VMBACKUP module in some manner once I know what the problem is.
> 
> Dave
>

Dave,

   > CCW 28AD98 0428AD3C 20000018

04 = Command Code, which is a SENSE
28AD3C = Data Address,
20 = Flags, in this case SLI (Suppress Length Indication)
0018 = Byte count, i.e. 24 bytes to be moved

So, it looks like VMBACKUP is asking about the tape drive, i.e., "Who are you?" or "What can you do?" or something like that.  The answer comes back:

> *** E51D5E I/O   0310 ==> 026694  CSW 0C00

0C = Unit Status, which has Channel End, and Device End set
00 = Channel Status, which has nothing set

Basically, it seems that VMBACKUP asked a question and got no response.   That probably means that the AWSTAPE doesn't respond with anything meaningful when interrogated for its attributes.   

(I pulled this info from a System/370 Reference Summary, GX20-1850-3, which I have clung to for about 30 years.  Some of the folks here can regale you with stories about "green" and "yellow" cards...)

Jim