What's new in MAS Release 3.10-03, Build 4464 (04/12/2005) Note: Release 3.10-03 is distributed as an upgrade to be applied on top of any existing Release 3.02 through 3.10 MAS. As such, there are no "Recovery CDs" for MAS Release 3.10-03, only a Utilities CD, which includes the update. To perform a full system restore, use the Release 3.02 Recovery CDs, then apply the 3.10-03 upgrade. The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.10-02 and 3.10-03: 1. The MAS application, btilxapp, has been updated to version 3.10-03 (Build 4464). 2. PCI-X ESCON (PXSA4) and FiCon (PXFA) adapter firmware have been updated to version 2200. This version of btilxapp will not support a PXSA4 or PXFA firmware version below this level. 3. Problems fixed in this release: a. If the VSE BTIMOUNT program attempted to mount a volume on the same drive that was sending the mount request, the mount request would always fail with a return code 01 after a 110 second timeout. b. The MAS now correctly ignores any tape library subdirectory with a name that contains any lower case letters. Valid tape library subdirectory names must consist of only upper case letters and numbers. c. While a tape volume mount is in progress, a QUERY command now displays "Mount in Progress" and the volume being mounted, rather than displaying that the drive is simply in the unloaded state. d. Intermittent FiCon channel errors, lost interrupts, and lost "ready" interrupts under certain heavy load conditions and/or during periods of high channel error recovery activity have been fixed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.10-02, Build 2792 (02/01/2005) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.10-01 and 3.10-02: 1. The MAS application, btilxapp, has been updated to version 3.10-02 (Build 2792). 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. If the MAS tape library resided on an NFS filesystem, the MAS did not recognize subdirectories within the tape library. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.10-01, Build 1830 (12/23/2004) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.10-00 and 3.10-01: 1. The MAS application, btilxapp, has been updated to version 3.10-01 (Build 1830). 2. PCI-X ESCON (PXSA4) and FiCon (PXFA) adapter firmware have been updated to version 2100. This version of btilxapp will not support a PXSA4 or PXFA firmware version below this level. 3. Problems fixed in this release: a. With Ficon only, the MAS might occasionally fail to come up if the Ficon cable was either not plugged into the MAS or the Host. b. With Ficon only, the MAS startup might occasionally fail with a Ficon adapter timeout when directly connected to some types of Host. c. With Ficon only, the MAS would return the same serial numbers to the Host for different MAS devices residing on Control Units with the same low-order four bits of CU address. For example, devices on CU 11, 21, or C1 would have the same serial number as devices on CU 01. Under this condition, only one of the control units' devices could be varied online; the others would be rejected by the Host as duplicate devices. d. A scratch volser synonym less than 6 characters long and containing any character not normally allowed in an IBM volume serial number (anything other than 0-9, A-Z and underscore) would not be recognized at mount time as a scratch synonym. The mount would fail with "invalid volume serial number". e. If a mount initiated by the Bus-Tech VSE mount program were to fail, the MAS was returning a 'SUCCESS' return code to the Host. The correct error codes are now returned to the Host for a mount failure. f. When using alternate paths on two ESCON interfaces, under certain rare circumstances a MAS device might cause a "lost interrupt - missing device end" error on the Host after an immediate-type CCW such as Rewind, BSB, or WTM. 4. Other changes in this release: a. Timestamps can be shown on every message displayed on the MAS console by entering the command SET TIMESTAMPS=YES. The default is to not display timestamps, as before. Messages written to the log file are still timestamped regardless of the SET TIMESTAMPS setting. 5. The Linux AWS utilities package has been updated to version 3.2. This release fixes a problem with awsflat's handling of AWS files containing an awsmap record. This version also changes awsflat to write its output to stdout. As of this release of the AWS utilities, the utilities' version numbering no longer has any relationship to the MAS release number. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.10-00, Build 9722 (10/20/2004) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.06-02 and 3.10-00: 1. The MAS application, btilxapp, has been updated to version 3.10-00 (Build 9722). 2. PCI ESCON adapter (PBSA4) firmware has been updated to version 2600. This version of btilxapp will not support a PBSA4 firmware version below this level. 3. PCI-X ESCON (PXSA4) and FiCon (PXFA) adapter firmware have been updated to version 1800. This version of btilxapp will not support a PXSA or PXFA firmware version below this level. 4. The Bus-Tech channel adapter drivers are now at version 4.0.0-1. 5. Problems fixed in this release: a. A MAS with FiCon adapter(s) installed would lose several minutes from its system clock every time the MAS was rebooted. b. For all MAS 3.06-xx releases with two FiCon adapters installed, the adapter numbers were reversed, contrary to the MAS chassis labeling and the MAS User's Guide. The FiCon adapters now match the MAS chassis labeling and documentation. c. The message "MAS230W: WARNING: Device path is on root filesystem!" would display at startup even though the tape library and subdirectories were set up correctly, where the base tape library directory resided (correctly) on the root filesystem and the subdirectories resided (correctly) on external filesystems. Now this message displays only if the base tape library is on the root filesystem AND there are no subdirectories under it. The message also displays for any subdirectory that resides on the root filesystem. d. On a FiCon connection, a NOP or other immediate CCW with an unusually long length field could cause an interface control check. e. Volumes with volsers of less than six characters could be initialized with invalid VOL1 labels, making them unrecognizable to the Host. 6. Other changes in this release: a. The PATH= parameter has been removed from the INITIALIZE command. Use the DEV=devicename parameter, introduced in MAS release 3.05-01, to specify the tape library path name. For more information about using the INIT command, enter the MAS console command HELP INIT. b. The MAS devices now send a default Missing Interrupt Timeout value (of 3000 seconds) to the Host in the Read Configuration Data data. Hosts that support this parameter (MVS, OS/390, z/OS) will set the MAS devices' MIH time automatically now. The default MIH times can still be overridden by the normal Host configuration or console commands. 7. The Bus-Tech VSE Utilities packages has been updated to version 4.0.3. This release includes the following changes: a. If you add an UPSI 1 switch to the JCL for BTIEPDEL and BTIDTDEL, the output listing from these utilities will only list tapes that are scratched during this run, not tapes that were already scratched from previous runs. b. BTITAPE REXX script has better handling of startup errors. c. An erroneous error message from BTIMOUNT has been corrected. d. A problem in BTITAPE with large dataset names with dynam/t has been corrected. 8. The Linux AWS utilities packages has been updated to version 3.10-01. This release has added support for subdirectories and flat tape volumes. 9. The MVS UIM and utilities package has been updated to version 1.6. This release has a new utility, MASSCR, that replaces the separate scratch utilities for RMM, Control-T, TMS, TLMS, and Zara. See the MAS User's Guide for more information about MASSCR. In addition, the MASLIB program in this release has been updated to set the default media type to MEDIA2, and to support a variable length volser in its input statements. 10. The MAS User's Guide is now at Edition 7 (Rev. G0, October 2004). All of the above changes are reflected and all previous errata have been corrected in the new manual. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.06-02, Build 7837 (08/02/2004) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.06-01 and 3.06-02: 1. The MAS application, btilxapp, has been updated to version 3.06-02 (Build 7837). 2. FiCon/ppc2 adapter firmware has been updated to version 1400. 3. Problems fixed in this release: a. On FiCon only, if an output job is cancelled by the Host operator and the Host issues a Halt I/O to the MAS to cancel a write in progress, the output MAS virtual tape volume could be truncated to less than what was successfully written before the Halt I/O. b. On FiCon only, the MVS command "ds p,xxxx,nn" would result in the following error message: IOS051I Interface timout detected on xxxx,xx,9F,**02 After the error, all MAS devices on this interface would stop responding until the MAS was restarted. 4. Other changes in this release: a. Output data compression (IDRC) performance has been improved somewhat by using a slightly less aggressive level of compression. This change can cause a slightly larger file size for compressed output, compared to previous MAS releases. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.06-01, Build 6568 (06/10/2004) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.06-00 and 3.06-01: 1. The MAS application, btilxapp, has been updated to version 3.06-01 (Build 6568). 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. Messages MAS075I, MAS076I, and MAS077I, which describe the channel adapters at startup and in response to the "QUERY ALL" command, were only displaying adapters that had connections defined. Now all adapters are displayed whether or not they are in use. b. If the MAS was equipped with FiCon channel interface(s), message "MAS316E: Device received unexpected data on path n" was being displayed on every Back Space Block command. 3. Other changes in this release: a. The SHOW CHANNEL command now supports the new keyword "ADAPTERS". This command displays messages MAS075I, MAS076I, and MAS077I, which describe all the channel adapters in the MAS. The full syntax for the SHOW CHANNEL command is now: SHOW CHANNEL [ ADAPTERS | PATHS ] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.06-00, Build 6177 (05/25/2004) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.05-01 and 3.06-00: 1. The MAS application, btilxapp, has been updated to version 3.06-00. 2. FiCon/ppc2 adapter firmware has been updated to version 1300. 3. Problems fixed in this release: a. The MAS response to the Read Device Characteristics command has been corrected for MAS devices configured as 3490. The previous value caused an MVS "DS QT" command to show the MAS device as a "348X" rather than the correct "3490-C22". b. If a virtual tape volume larger than the current maximum volume size limit (it must have written when the SIZE= value was set higher than the current setting) was mounted, an attempt to write at an offset higher than the current size setting would result in a Unit Check, with the MAS displaying the message "MAS427I: write attempt past end of tape". The MAS now returns Logical End of Volume to the Host under this condition, allowing up to 1 MB of additional data to be written before presenting Physical End of Volume. c. The MAS Logical End of Volume signal was causing Innovation's FDR Backup to abend when it reached the MAS maximum volume size. This has been corrected in the MAS. 4. Other changes in this release: a. If a Host program were to read past the end of all the user's files on a MAS virtual tape volume, it would read unpredictable data, just as on a real tape drive. This might be seen with a tape-to-tape copy program, for example, which reads until physical end of tape. To eliminate any possible confusion, the MAS no longer returns "undefined" data but now returns "tape void" to any read that occurs past the end of all the data written by the Host. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.05-01, Build 4548 (03/25/2004) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.05-00 and 3.05-01: 1. The MAS application, btilxapp, has been updated to version 3.05-01. 2. The PBFA FiCon adapter firmware has been updated to version 1300. 3. Problems fixed in this release: a. For tape libraries on NFS filesystems only: If the filesystem ran out of space while writing a tape volume and the MAS operator manually resumed the job after freeing disk space, the tape volume might contain corrupted data. To resolve this, running out of space on an NFS filesystem is now an unrecoverable error; the Host job will receive an immediate equipment check if this occurs. b. A QUERY SPACE command could cause the MAS application to abend if any tape library subdirectory had permissions that prevented user `vtape' from reading the directory. c. Error message "MAS480E: Both active and scratch volumes exist in tape library" could be displayed erroneously if two scratch requests were being processed at exactly the same time in the same tape library. There really was no error occurring, and the scratch requests were fulfilled successfully. 4. Other changes in this release: a. Changes to the INITIALIZE command include: - The new DEV=devicename parameter is an alternative to the existing PATH=pathname parameter, to initialize the tapes in the tape library currently attached to the specified device. - The LABEL=N option has been added to initialize unlabeled tapes. - Volsers starting with `BFL' can no longer be initialized. BFLxxx volsers are reserved for data exchange ("flat file") support and do not have to be initialized. - If multiple volumes are initialized at once by using the COUNT= parameter, the incrementing of the volser is not allowed to change the two character volser prefix. For example, you cannot initialize VOL=B100 COUNT=250 because you would end up with volumes B100 through B349, which includes three different volser prefixes (B1, B2, and B3), which belong in three different tape library subdirectories. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.05-00, Build 4070 (03/02/2004) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.04-01 and 3.05-00: 1. Bus-Tech MAS programs and scripts have been updated to version 3.05-00. 2. The PBSA4 ESCON Channel adapter firmware is now at version 2300, and the PBFA FiCon Channel adapter firmware is now at version 1100. 3. Channel adapter drivers are now at version 3.0.2-1. 4. The MAS User's Guide is now at version F0 (Sixth Edition, March 2004). 5. The VSE utilities package is now at version 4.0.0. This release supports multiple volser prefixes and tape library subdirectories. Refer to the MAS User's Guide and the README.TXT in the Utilities CD VSE directory for more information. 6. The MVS utilities package is now at version 1.5. This release replaces RMMSCR with RMMSCRO for MVS and OS/390, and RMMSCRZ for Z/OS. In addition, CTRLTSCR has been added for scratching tapes under control of the Control-T tape manager. 7. Problems fixed in this release: a. If device names are more than 5 characters long, the QUERY SPACE command could cause an abend in btilxapp. b. If a SET SIZE command was entered while a tape was mounted and being written to, and the new SIZE was lower than the current position on the tape, the next write or write tapemark command would receive a Unit Check cause by "writing past physical end of tape". Now, logical end of tape is returned immediately but physical end of tape won't be signaled for another 1 MB past the current position. c. An erased, scratch ANSI volumes would be rejected by the Host due to a label error. d. A volume that was renamed because the Host wrote a different volume serial number than the original volser could end up in the wrong tape library subdirectory, if the the new volser prefix (1st two characters) was different than the original. Now the new volser is rejected if it has a different volser prefix. e. When mounting a scratch tape, the MAS would allocate the first scratch it found, ignoring whether an ANSI or Standard labeled tape was requested. Now the MAS will only select a scratch tape with the requested label type. f. If a scratch report generated by the Host contained scratch tapes that were not yet used on the MAS, the scratching of those tapes would be rejected due to a "mismatched DSN". This is because the Host scratching program would send a DSN of all spaces, which miscompares to a brand new scratch tape's DSN of all zeros. The MAS now accepts the scratch request under this condition. g. The AWSHEX program would loop on the last line of data if the file size was exactly a multiple of 16 bytes. h. The AWSDIR program would display poorly formatted screen if it encountered a file for which it did not have access permission. i. If alternate paths were configured, the MAS would send the "Ready" interrupt on the first path only. If the first path was not online, the interrupt would not be presented to the Host at all. The MAS now sends the "Ready" interrupt on the first online path. j. Once the disk space recovery threshold was reached, a MAS524W "already erased" message would be displayed at every recovery cylce for every newly initialized scratch tape (approximately every 15 seconds). k. If the Host wrote invalid labels to a MAS virtual tape, subsequent attempts to read the tape would probably result in the Host rejecting the volume due to a "label error". The Host would unload the volume and request it again and again. In previous MAS releases this condition was not detected as a mount loop. This release adds this situation to the mount loop detection logic to prevent an infinite loop. (For more information refer to the MAS technical note "Corrupted Tape Labels Cause MAS Mount Loop on MVS" on the Bus-Tech Support web site, l. Console messages written during logfile rotation were not being written to the log file. 8. Other changes in this release: a. The Perform Subsystem Function CCW (x'77') logical file-protect function is now supported. Previously, RACF might have refused to allocate a MAS tape because it could not set logical file protect. b. If a deferred tape library change failed to complete successfully, the change was attempted again at every subsequent Load and Unload. Now, the MAS attempts the deferred path change one time only. c. If the MAS keyboard is attached through a KVM switch that uses the sequence of keys to jump from system to system, sometimes a superfluous Scroll Lock key makes it through to the MAS. In prior releases, this could cause the MAS user interface to freeze. As of release 3.05, the MAS completely ignores all Scroll Lock keys at all times. For the same reason, the MAS application now ignores the and keys also. d. Once the disk space recovery threshold has been reached, space recovery is attempted whenever a tape is scratched. Previously, the recovery was not attempted unless the actual usage percentage changed, so scratching any number of tapes, which in itself does not change the disk usage, did not cause a recovery attempt. e. The MAS configuration program now supports configuration of "scratch synonyms". Scratch synonyms allow you to tell the MAS that certain volsers are to be treated the same as "SCRTCH" and "PRIVAT" requests, that is to treat these volsers as scratch requests. Examples of where this is needed include using OAM which requests scratches as MEDIA1, MEDIA2, etc., or if you have a tape manager that requests scratch tapes by a special pool name. See the MAS User's Guide for more information about scratch synonyms. f. FiCon link (port) addresses can now be up to 4 digits, from 0001 through FFFF. ESCON link addresses are still limited to the range 01-FF. g. The NOCHECK option has been added to the SET PATH command. If a tape library validation fails due to an error such as a volser being in the wrong subdirectory, but you absolutely, positively, must change to this tape library, you can add the NOCHECK parameter to tell the MAS to ignore the error and change the tape library path anyway. h. The LABEL=S/A parameter has been added the the INITIALIZE command so that volumes can be initialized with either IBM Standard labels (the default) or ANSI labels. i. Pending path changes, if any, are now displayed in the QUERY CONFIG display. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.04-01 Build 2847 (01/08/2004) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.04-00 and 3.04-01: 1. The following changes were made to btilxapp: - When new virtual tape volumes are created with the MAS "INITIALIZE" command, they are now created as "erased" scratch tapes rather than ordinary scratch tapes. In addition, they receive a timestamp of "01/01/1990 00:00:00", rather than the current date and time. These changes ensure that newly initialized tapes will be used prior to any other currently existing scratch tapes. - When virtual tape volumes are scratched, they now receive the current timestamp. Prior releases did not change the timestamp when a volume was scratched, so they retained the date of when they were created or last updated. This change ensures that the scratch date rather than the tape creation or last update date is used to determine the "oldest scratch tape" when the MAS is searching for a scratch tape to allocate. 2. The AWS utilities have been upgraded to version 3.04-01. This release fixes a problem in awsdir and awsprint when displaying compressed volumes. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in MAS Release 3.04-00 Build 1787 (11/24/2003) The following changes were made between MAS releases 3.02 and 3.04-00: 1. All Bus-Tech MAS programs and scripts have been updated to version 3.04-00. 2. ESCON Channel adapter firmware is now at level 2200. 3. FiCon Channel adapter firmware is now at level 1100. 4. Channel adapter drivers are now at level 3.0.1. 5. The MAS User's Guide is now at level E0 (Fifth Edition, November 2003). 6. The MVS UIM and Utilities package is now at version 1.4. This package includes a fix to the UIM to support LOCANY. The new UIM is backwards compatible with previous releases of the MAS, and should be installed if you plan to specify LOCANY for the MAS devices. 7. The MAS now supports FiCon channels as well as ESCON. Contact Bus-Tech Sales for more information about the new Bus-Tech FiCon channel adapter options. 8. The MAS now supports multiple subdirectories within a tape library. Refer to the User's Guide for more information. Notes to existing customers upgrading from prior MAS releases, regarding the new tape library schema: First, be assured that existing configurations will continue to work with no changes required, but please note the following: In prior releases, in a standard configuration, your tape library disk volume was expected to be mounted on "/mnt/dvol1" and contain a directory called "tapelib". For convenience, previous releases of the MAS contained a symbolic link named "/tapelib" that pointed to the actual directory "/mnt/dvol1/tapelib". Therefore, your MAS configuration could refer to either "/tapelib" or "/mnt/dvol1/tapelib" to access your tape library. Starting in MAS 3.04, new installations are not supplied with the "/tapelib" symbolic link. Instead, a tape library directory called "/tapelib" is provided for you. You are expected to create one or more sub-directories in the supplied "/tapelib" directory, then mount a disk volume on each of these sub-directories. All of your virtual tape volumes will reside in these sub-directories. This allows for increased capacity of your tape library; as your tape library disk(s) fill, you can add an additional sub-directory and mount an additional disk to it at any time. You can continue to run with your current tape library setup, but to take advantage of the new multiple directory feature you will need to convert your tape library structure to the new schema. Please refer to the User's Guide chapter 3 "Defining the Disk Subsystem", and consult with Bus-Tech support for assistance in converting your existing tape library to the new schema. 9. By default, the MAS no longer automatically creates a new tape volume when a nonexistent tape is requested by the Host. All tapes must be pre-defined on the MAS, using the new MAS "INITIALIZE" command. Notes to existing customers upgrading from prior MAS releases: First, be assured that existing configurations will continue to work with no changes required, but please note the following: The MAS device configuration parameter "VOL=prefix", which was required in previous releases, has been deprecated. It is no longer recommended for new installations, but is supported for backwards compatibility with existing customers. If "VOL=prefix" is specified now, it allows the MAS to automatically create a tape volume when the Host requests a nonexistent tape that starts with the configured volser prefix, just like it did in prior releases. If the Host requests a non-existent tape that doesn't start with the configured volser prefix, the MAS will not create it, also just like before. If no "VOL=prefix" is specified, the MAS will never create a requested tape automatically. 10. MAS devices can now be configured as either 3480 or 3490 drives. Refer to the User's Guide for configuration considerations. 11. Locate and Forward Space File commands in AWS format volumes have a marked performance improvement. In most cases, these commands are virtually instantaneous now. The improvement will only occur on AWS volumes that are written under MAS release 3.04 and above; there will be no improvement when accessing any volumes written on any prior releases of the MAS. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- end of WHATSNEW.TXT file ---------------------------------------------