Bus-Tech Mainframe Appliance for Storage (MAS) MAS Release 4.04-49 Caution: MAS release 4 was a major new release of the MAS software and hardware platform. Note that MAS release 4.xx software will ONLY function on the new MAS hardware. If you have a version 2.x or 3.x MAS, do NOT attempt to install any MAS 4.xx release on it. Please call Bus-Tech Support for more information. This document lists the most recent information known as of the release level and date printed above; for the most current information about the MAS, check the Bus-Tech Support web site at www.bustech.com. This Release Notes document is cumulative and describes all the changes made in all MAS 4.xx releases to date. Note: This Release is distributed as an upgrade to be installed on a MAS already running any existing 4.xx release. To apply the update, follow the instructions in the update directory on the MAS Utilities CD. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.04-48 and 4.04-49: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-49 (build 2542) b. Channel adapter firmware 4230 c. Channel drivers 4.3.1 d. SCSI tape (st) driver 1.21 e. MASZOS.XMI release 3.1 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. Scratch allocation would pick the wrong library when there was a large amount of free space in the library because of an arithmetic error in the algorithm. The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.04-44 and 4.04-48: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-48 (build 2230) b. Channel adapter firmware 4230 c. Channel drivers 4.3.1 d. SCSI tape (st) driver 1.21 e. MASZOS.XMI release 3.1 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. CENTERA - A tape could be damaged after a write if other CCWs were received before the CLOSE request. b. CENTERA - A release update could cause error messages if CENTERA paths were not saved prior to starting the MAS application. c. GENERAL - Firmware has been updated to Version 4230. The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.04-43 and 4.04-44: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-44 (build 1863) b. Channel adapter firmware 4222 c. Channel drivers 4.3.1 d. SCSI tape (st) driver 1.21 e. MASZOS.XMI release 3.1 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. CENTERA - an expired tape could not be scratched on a compliant Centera. The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.04-37 and 4.04-43: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-43 (build 1166) b. Channel adapter firmware 4222 c. Channel drivers 4.3.1 d. SCSI tape (st) driver 1.21 e. MASZOS.XMI release 3.1 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. Under certain conditions, the MAS might display the following message during a mount request for a specific volser, when that volser was previously mounted as a scratch tape on another MAS: "MAS480E: Both active and scratch volser volumes exist in , mount ignored". This mount will fail, but a subsequent request for that volser will be successful. b. Changes to RECOVERYPERCENT and RECOVERYAMT while recovery is in progress are now honored immediately. c. The FICON channel adapter was not automatically resetting after some abnormal terminations. d. An unusually high number of memory parity errors were being detected on some FICON adapters. e. The MAS077I message was not displaying the new firmware version if a channel adapter firmware was updated on the fly. 3. Other changes in this release: a. The quantity of scratch tapes available has been added to the output of the QUERY SPACE command. b. Security of data is enhanced by full path, FICON channel, and application CRC generation and checking. c. The MAS will now send the asychronous Ready interrupt to the channel path that requested the tape mount, rather than any other path on the same LPAR. It is possible that other path(s) might have failed or been taken out of service without properly notifying the MAS; in this case, the Ready interrupt might have been lost without the MAS being aware, resulting in a Ready tape but no interrupt being presented to the host operating system. d. The MAS log file (btilog) will now grow to 10 MB (instead of 1 MB) before rotating to btilog_01, etc. In addition, the btilog_nn files will be archived when 100 files are reached (instead of 500). e. The MVS utilities package MASZOS.XMI release 3.1 includes the following changes: MASCMD version 1.3: - An 0C4 abend was fixed. - PARM=WTOR wasn't always recognized. - Fixed looping on WTOR. - Corrected parsing of PARM=CMD=x where x is a single character. MASSCR version 1.14: - Supports non-RMM MTL TCDB status update by changing tape attribute from private to scratch in TCDB after a successful scratch of an MTL volser. - Allows for DSN of binary zeros in any report. - In an MTL situation, RMMDV UNSCR now changes the TCDB use attribute from scratch to private. - Adds support for the ALLVOLS parameter. This will ignore the check for blank DSNs in the input report and send all VOLSERs to the MAS to be scratched. Note that this may result in many "already a scratch" log messages. - Write header line to MASLOG even when no volumes are processed. - Adds CTLT and CTLM to TCDB processing for MTLs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.04-25 and 4.04-37: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-37 (build 525) b. Channel adapter firmware 4219 c. Channel drivers 4.2.6 d. SCSI tape (st) driver 1.21 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. Virtual tape drives on Control Unit 0 may not vary online if devices on other control units were activated first by the host. b. Under certain conditions, the MAS was displaying message "MAS318E: Device xxxx received unexpected data on connection x, path=x". No error actually occurred, and processing continued normally. c. A channel interface control check might be caused by the MAS after a Halt I/O. d. If multiple simultaneous channel errors occurred, the MAS was saving a channel adapter diagnostic trace for each of them simultaneously. Now, only one trace is saved for simultaneous errors. e. Channel adapter firmware tracing might be left disabled after multiple simultaneous channel errors. f. A compliant-mode Centera was allowing tape volumes to be scratched. g. The MAS configuration program now allows a longer string of Cluster Host names with PEA file names to be saved without truncating. 3. Other changes in this release: a. When a range of SCSI tape drives is defined with the MAS configuration program by specifying a Tapelib Path value of /dev/nstx (where x is a decimal starting device number), the /dev/nstx name is now incremented for the number of devices being defined. For example, if defining 16 devices and /dev/nst0 is specified, the first device will be configured to use /dev/nst0, the second to use /dev/nst1, and the sixteenth to use /dev/nst15. b. OEM Specific license honored. c. The size of the MAS-Centera database will no longer grow indefinately over time. d. The linuxsnap diagnostic utility is now at version 1.5. e. MAS-Centera database passwords are now stored on the MAS in an encrypted format. f. The message "MAS796I: Device unloaded" is now displayed whenever a SCSI-attached tape is unloaded. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.04-21 and 4.04-25: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-25 (build 8968) b. Channel adapter firmware 4217 c. Channel drivers 4.2.6 d. SCSI tape (st) driver 1.18 e. z/OS Utilities package 3.0 f. AWS Utilities package 4.2 2. Problems fixed in this release: The following problem fixes apply only to a MAS system using NFS tape library storage: a. Under rare circumstances, simultaneous mounts of a scratch tape by two devices in the same tape library could result in a tape file remaining locked on the NFS server after being unloaded by the MAS. This might result in "MAS451E: file is open elsewhere" on a subsequent attempt to mount the tape. The following problem fixes apply only to a MAS system using Centera tape library storage: b. Starting in this release, Centera-resident virtual tapes created or extended by MAS 4.04-25 and above no longer have backwards incompatibility with a 4.03 or prior MAS. However, tapes previously created or extended by MAS releases 4.04-00 through 4.04-21 will remain backwards incompatible with a 4.03 or prior MAS. Contact Bus-Tech Support for assistance if you have this situation. c. The MAS was not able to use Centera pea files due to a permission problem. d. If certain Centera errors (such as lost data) occurred during mounting of an existing virtual tape, the MAS was creating a new scratch tape for the volume. Now the mount fails with an appropriate error message. The following problem fixes apply only to a MAS system using SCSI- attached direct tape drives: e. SCSI tape error recovery, messages, and diagnostics have been improved. f. A MAS console UNLOAD command for a SCSI-attached tape drive could hang the MAS keyboard process for several minutes if the device failed to respond. The following problem fixes apply to all MAS systems: g. Attempts to scratch an unlabeled tape would result in incorrect error messages on the MAS and/or incorrect error codes returned to the host. h. The QUERY LABELS command did not show the header labels for flat tapes. i. QUERY output sometimes did not show the "compr" compression indication for compressed writes. j. The QUERY SPACE "Active" and "Scratch" totals were incorrect when the same filesystem was mounted on subdirectories in the same tape library. k. An update to support the 2007 change in U.S. Daylight Savings Time has been installed. l. Under certain circumstances, writing to a statistics file might fail, with the error message "MAS033E: Error writing to mount/unmount statistic file" occurring repeatedly until the MAS was restarted. m. The awsmake utility did not function correctly when stdin had been unassigned (as with the MAS RUN command). n. The awsmake utility was writing an invalid second end-of-file tapemark. o. An awsdir formatting problem could occur for tape libraries residing on certain filesystems. p. A system reset on one FICON channel path might cause an I/O error on a different channel path. 3. Other changes in this release: a. MAS 4.04 now supports the ability to write data to a Centera in a variable sized blob instead of a fixed blob size. This feature can save a small amount of Centera disk space for tape volumes that are appended (i.e. DISP=MOD) numerous times. Note that this feature will make virtual tape volumes that are incompatible with prior MAS releases. Contact Bus-Tech Support for more information about enabling this feature. b. The QUERY command's "compr" compression indicator has been expanded to "h-compr" and "s-compr" to show whether the compression was performed by hardware or software. In addition, an encryption indicator has been added to show if encryption was performed. For example: E980 BT1234 S R-A2 aws/rw block 155571 (writing 15M h-compr crypt) c. The QUERY command now displays not-accessible SCSI tape drives with 'NA' instead of 'NR'. For example: F000 NA-A2 scsi d. The z/OS MASCMD program version 1.1, which has shipped with every MAS 4.04 release, now accepts input from an EXEC statement PARM in addition to the traditional CARDIN input. To input a single command from the PARM parameter, specify it like this example: //EXAMPLE EXEC PGM=MASCMD,PARM='CMD=Q SPACE' --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.04-20 and 4.04-21: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-21 (build 8030) b. Channel adapter firmware 4216 c. Channel drivers 4.2.6 d. SCSI tape (st) driver 1.15 2. Problems fixed in this release: The following problem fixes apply only to a MAS system using Centera tape library storage: a. Centera customers migrating from MAS 4.03-xx to 4.04-xx may see seemingly random failures (decompression failures, block not found, read errors) and other symptoms when trying to read tapes created by the older MAS version. b. A FSF or FSB command at end of data might fail to return a "tape void" error to the host. The following problem fixes apply only to a MAS system using SCSI- attached direct tape drives: c. For SCSI-attached tape drives assigned to a Unisys host, the Load Display message sent to the tape drive for a manual mount did not conform to the usual Unisys format. d. The QUERY command showed tapes mounted on a SCSI-attached tape drive as "unlabeled" regardless of the tape's label type. 3. Other changes in this release: a. MAS virtual tapes residing on Centera that are created or extended by any MAS 4.04 release are not backwards compatible with any 4.03 or earlier MAS. b. For MAS devices assigned to a Unisys host, on scratch tape mount requests the MAS now ignores the label type requested and fulfills the mount request with a scratch tape with any label type. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.04-15 and 4.04-20: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-20 (build 7456) b. Channel adapter firmware 4216 c. Channel drivers 4.2.6 d. SCSI tape (st) driver 1.13 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. On a Unisys mainframe, a MAS channel interface may intermittently hang when channel links from multiple mainframes are physically or logically removed and then reestablished in a different sequence. b. On a Unisys mainframe, a MAS channel interface may intermittently hang after a Rewind command. c. The MAS application command interface (from keyboard, Linux mascmd, and Host MASCMD) could stop taking input if the Linux mascmd program was cancelled with before the command it sent was executed by the MAS application. d. Under some circumstances, an EXPORT or IMPORT command would report that the target SCSI tape drive was not ready when it was ready. e. If a change of PATH from a virtual tape library to a SCSI tape drive was deferred because a tape was mounted at the time of the SET command, the PATH change would fail with a MAS235E message when the tape eventually unloaded. f. For Centera only, ownership of /centera_data/db_backups was set to user 'vtape' when it should have been owned by user 'postgres'. g. For SCSI tapes only, the MAS was not returning the proper ERPA code (sense byte 3) for reading or backspacing into loadpoint. h. On Unisys only, if an uninitialized tape was mounted on a MAS SCSI tape drive an incorrect ERPA code in sense byte 3 would cause the host to display an "UNEXER" error message and reject the tape. i. A StorageTek 4890 tape drive was not recognized as an IBM 3490E compatible drive, so Load Display commands did not function. 3. Other changes in this release: a. The MAS LOAD command is now supported for SCSI tape. The only action it performs is to send a Load Display message, in the standard z/OS 'MxxxxxxS' format, to the tape drive. b. The MAS UNLOAD command is now supported for SCSI tape. Note that the UNLOAD command will be accepted and processed even if the SCSI tape drive is currently is a Ready state. c. When a MAS virtual drive is assigned to a SCSI tape drive, QUERY DEVICE+ displays the drive's vendor and model information. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.03-32 and 4.04-15: 1. Component version numbers in this release: a. MAS application 4.04-15 (build 6185) b. Channel adapter firmware 4209 c. Channel drivers 4.2.6 2. New features in this release: a. The MAS now supports sending SNMP messages to an SNMP manager. See the MAS Users Guide for more information. b. The MAS now supports encryption of data written to MAS virtual tape libraries and to SCSI attached tapes. See the MAS Users Guide for more information. c. The MAS now supports attaching physical SCSI tape drives to MAS virtual tape drive addresses, enabling the Host to write and read physical tapes on drives connected to the MAS. In addition, physical tapes can be imported to and exported from MAS virtual tape volumes. See the MAS Users Guide for more information. d. Large blocks (greater than 64K-1 bytes) are now supported on FICON as well as ESCON. The maximum block size supported is now 256K for both. e. A new configuration parameter, RECOVERYAMOUNT, has been added. This parameter tells the MAS to attempt to erase RECOVERYAMOUNT percent of disk space whenever the RECOVERYPERCENT amount of disk usage has been reached. Valid values are 1 to 100; the default is 1, which is how the MAS worked before this parameter was added. The value can also be set with the SET RECOVERYAMOUNT=nn MAS console command. 2. Other changes in this release: a. In the MAS configuration program, the method of generating MAS device names has changed. Previous releases appended the device unit address to the name provided by the user. Now, the device name provided by the user is incremented by the number of devices being defined. For example, if 64 devices are being defined and "E980" is entered in the Device Name field, the configurator will generate device names "E980" through "E91F" (rather than "E98000" through "E9803F" as before). b. The MAS now supports any combination of EBCDIC VOLn, UVLn, HDRn, and UHLn labels. c. Centera retention times are now set to 00:00:01 on the designated expiration date. Previously, they were set to expire on the designated date at the same time of day as when the file was written. d. Flat file read performance has been significantly improved. On FICON, flat file reads perform at the same speed as AWS format reads. On ESCON, flat file read performance is approximate 50% of the speed of AWS format reads. e. Scratching of unexpired tapes that reside on a compliant Centera is no longer allowed. f. The MAS now sends a device's asynchronous Ready interrupt to each of the channel paths which have a PathGroup ID set, but only once for each unique PathGroup ID. Previously, the MAS sent the Ready interrupt only to the channel path which issued the Mount request. g. The AWS utilities package has been updated to version 4.1. This release supports large blocks (>64KB) and encrypted data. h. The MVS Utilities and UIM package has been renamed from UIMFTP.XMI to MASZOS.XMI; the new release is version 3.0. Fixes and changes in this release include: - tHE V348x UIM allows multiple hosts to use the same CU number. - MASSCR supports the CTRL-T 6.0.14 scratch report. - MASSCR supports several new ZARA, CTLM, and TMS scratch report variations. - MASSCR has incorporated the RMMDV program features, and RMMDV has been retired. - MASCMD is a new program that allows commands to be sent from the host to the MAS. See the MAS Users Guide for more information. i. The MAS now automatically recovers from a recoverable channel adapter failure. If a recoverable failure occurs, the adapter is automatically restarted and brought back into service. j. CTRL-ALT-DELETE has been disabled on the MAS to prevent accidental shutdowns, especially from VNC connections. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.03-31 and 4.03-32: 1. Problems fixed in this release: a. This release fixes a segmentation fault abend that occurred whenever there were three or more AWSMAP records associated with a tape, and a DISP=MOD occurred deep enough into the tape to be within the second or subsequent AWSMAP record (each AWSMAP record = approximately 10GB of tape data). In general, this means that a very large tape was being MODed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.03-27 and 4.03-31: 1. Problems fixed in this release: a. The channel adapter firmware has been upgraded to level 4100. This change, with an accompanying MAS application change, fixes a bug where a FICON read of less than the tape's blocksize not returning an incorrect length indicator to the mainframe. The problem was especially evident with DITTO. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.03-26 and 4.03-27: 1. Problems fixed in this release: a. The Centera error recovery fix from 4.03-26 was incomplete. A condition existed where there were occasional FP_FILESYS_ERR messages from the SDK, and a mount would be aborted with an I/O error. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.03-16 and 4.03-26: 1. Problems fixed in this release: a. Centera tape recovery would fail because the tape volser was in the incorrect centera_data folder. b. Old Centera tapes (pre 4.xx) used -1 in the First Block number to indicate there were no valid blobs. Newer releases use -2. This caused a LOCATE failure on older tapes. c. Firmware for ESCON and FICON was updated to 3900. This firmware solves a problem where many LPARS and devices caused the adapter to run out of buffers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.03-09 and 4.03-16: 1. Problems fixed in this release: a. Channel bonding scripts were inadvertently omitted from 4.03-09. b. VNC might not restart automatically after an ungraceful shutdown of the MAS, requiring a second restart of the MAS to correct. c. The MAS may not automatically detect that it was attached to a Unisys mainframe when connected to multiple Unisys hosts. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.2-7 and 4.03-09: 1. Problems fixed in this release: a. Read-only virtual tapes were being changed to read-write state upon unloading. This problem occurred only on NAS, SAN, and DAS tape libraries, not on Centera resident tapes. b. A scratched and erased ANSI labeled virtual tape volume would cause the host to display an "invalid label" message when the volume is next used. c. A Locate CCW while the MAS was Not Ready (intervention required) would result in a lost interrupt / missing device end on the host. 2. The AWS utilities package has been updated to version 3.7. Fixes in this release include: a. awsdir would not work with a read-only directory. b. awsdir would not recognize a file unless its group-id was vtape; now only the owner-id need be vtape. c. awsdir and awsprint might display some shifted or scrambled fields under certain conditions. d. All of the utilities now support --version. 3. Other changes in this release: a. A new MAS query command allows the displaying of the header labels of currently mounted tapes. The full command syntax is: QUERY LABELS [DEV=devicename] With a device name specified, only that device will be displayed. If no devicename is specified, all devices with a tape currently mounted will be displayed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.2-5 and 4.2-7: 1. Problems fixed in this release: a. When overwriting an existing unlabeled flat file, previous data was not truncated from the file. (This was actually fixed in 4.2-5 but was not documented as fixed in that release.) b. Some updates required a double reboot to be completed. c. The MAS now supports any combination of user and optional standard header labels. This eliminates warnings about "invalid labels", and fixes a failure to extract the expiration date from the HDR1 label when there were optional VOL2 through VOL9 labels preceding the HDR1. 2. Other changes in this release: a. Added support for Unisys tape management. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.1-19 and 4.2-5: 1. Problems fixed in this release: The following problem fixes apply to all MAS systems: a. In an environment with multiple LPARs, if the MAS is reset without properly varying all the path(s) offline on the host(s), some devices may cause "Assigned Elsewhere" or "Device In Use" messages on the host when trying to vary the MAS devices back online. (This has only been seen in a VSE environment.) b. A lost interrupt (MIH) error could occur after a Perform Subsystem Function (Logical File Protect) CCW. c. The USB flash drive mounting script, usbmount, has been fixed for systems with more than 26 disks attached. d. Under VSE with CA-Dynam/T, CA-EPIC, or BIM-EPIC prior to release 6.4B, scratch tape mount requests made by BTITAPE would fail with "volume not found" displayed on the MAS console. The following problem fixes apply only to a MAS system using Centera tape library storage: e. If the MAS was configured for tape volumes larger than 2 GB, an I/O error (equipment check) would be returned to the host when more than 2 GB was written to a tape. f. Jobs might fail with an OBJECT_IN_USE error message displayed on the MAS console. The following problem fixes apply only to a MAS system writing "flat files": g. A zero-length flat tape written by the host would contain the trailer labels instead of being empty. h. A read-only flat tape would be left in read-write mode when unloaded. i. A zero length input flat tape would be initialized with labels as if it didn't previously exist, instead of being presented to the host as an existing empty tape. j. A flat tape created by the MAS at mount time but never written to by the host is now deleted when unloaded. k. Several tape positioning commands that were previously rejected at all times are now allowed within the label area of a flat tape. 4. Other changes in this release: a. Added Centera recovery support for catastrophic MAS and/or database and/or Centera problems. All data cached on the MAS up through the last synchronization command from the host will be written to the Centera after the MAS and/or database and/or Centera returns from the outage. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.00-17 and 4.1-19: 1. Added 'dbdump' and 'tapeall' scripts. 2. Problems fixed in this release: a. The upgrade installation procedure would fail if run from a directory that contained embedded spaces in the directory name. b. On a Host running a tape management system that polls for device-ready after a mount request, rather than wait for the ready interrupt from the MAS, channel errors and/or lost interrupts could occur immediately after a tape mount. (This has only been seen on VSE running BIM-EPIC.) c. MAS system lockups could occur under certain very rare heavy load conditions. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.00-16 and 4.1-17: 1. Problems fixed in this release: The following problem fixes apply to all MAS systems: a. Space recovery not working when there were a large number of scratch volumes in the tape library. b. Under some circumstances, space recovery was not being triggered when a volume was scratched --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.00-11 and 4.1-16: 1. The MVS UIM and Utilities package has been updated to version 2.0. The release includes version MASSCR version 1.8 that now supports the ASG-Zara report format and CA-TMS version 5.2 report 05. 2. The AWS utilities package has been updated to version 3.5. This version supports data compressed with MAS hardware compression (see below). 3. Problems fixed in this release: The following problem fixes apply to all MAS systems: a. The MAS application was not being restarted automatically after some MAS system restarts. b. SHOW REJECTED PATHS and SHOW CHANNEL PATHS were only showing information about adapters that had active connections rather than all adapters. c. A FICON channel error could occur when using DITTO to read a MAS virtual tape. d. FICON channel adapters could halt with code B013 under certain heavy load conditions. e. An asynchronous "Ready" interrupt could be lost if the Host sent certain control CCWs (like Set Pathgroup ID) while the MAS was trying to present the status. This would not occur during normal operation, but might be seen if an alternate channel path were down at the time of the mount request. f. Read Buffered Log (RBL) block and byte statistics did not include data read backwards. g. QUERY SPACE output was truncating pathnames longer than 16 characters. h. The sense ERPA code sometimes contained the value x'27' (Command Reject) when a different value was more appropriate. i. Equipment checks were returning a sense ERPA code of x'00' instead of x'2C' (Permanent Equipment Check). j. A MAS with three ESCON adapters and more than about 240 devices defined could experience unpredictable results, including devices hanging and an abend during shutdown. k. Attempts to IPL from a virtual tape volume on a MAS device failed with an I/O error reported by the Host. l. Scratch mount requests would fail with no error message explaining why under either of the following conditions: 1) There was a single tape library subdirectory and it was not writable. 2) There were multiple tape library subdirectories, and the last one (alphabetically) was not writable. m. The INIT command was always defaulting to IBM Standard (SL) labels if no label type was specified. INIT now uses the default label type configured for the device. The following problem fixes apply only to a MAS system using Centera tape library storage: n. Tape expiration dates were not being picked up for ANSI (AL) labeled tapes written to Centera, and these volumes were being stored with zero retention on the Centera. o. 99/365 (permanent) expiration dates were being stored with zero retention on the Centera. p. 99/000 (today + 14 days) expiration dates were being stored with zero retention on the Centera. q. Retention periods stored on the Centera were off by one hour under some circumstances. r. An extra clip was being written to the Centera when a volume was mounted read-only. s. Some Centera I/O errors could cause the MAS application to abend. t. For tape volumes on Centera, unit exception was not being returned for a Write Tapemark past logical end of volume. u. Tape volumes written to Centera were being compressed even if COMPRESS=0 was set. v. When reading past end of data on a tape volume on Centera, message MAS419E (read error) was displayed without a preceding MAS423W (read past end of data) to explain why. w. A manual mount of a tape volume on Centera ignored the PROTECT (read-only) option. x. Centera tape volume unmount messages sometimes displayed the wrong volume serial number in the message. 4. Other changes in this release: The following changes apply to all MAS systems: a. The MAS now supports an optional hardware compression adapter to speed data compression and decompression. The hardware compression adapter will be used automatically if present. The new MAS command QUERY COMPRESSION will display information about the compression hardware. Hardware-compressed virtual tape volumes can be read by a MAS without a hardware compression adapter, but only with 4.1-16 or higher software. Because of a change to the AWS file format to support hardware compression, MAS virtual tape files containing hardware-compressed blocks cannot be read by older MAS software releases, or by unmodified third party software. b. The MAS now supports larger tape blocks of up to 512KB on ESCON only (FICON support will follow in a future release). Because of a change to the AWS file format to support large blocks, MAS virtual tape files containing blocks larger than 65535 (64K minus 1) bytes cannot be read by older MAS software releases, or by unmodified third party software. c. Scratch synonyms can now be up to 8 characters instead of 6. d. The MAS now recognizes scratch synonym mount requests when the synonym (pool name) is sent in the first character of the Load Display message, as might be done by some tape management systems. e. Searching for scratch tapes is now considerably faster when there are multiple tape library subdirectories with a large number of tapes; this is especially noticeable with NFS filesystems. f. Scratch tape searching now skips read-only tape library subdirectories. g. The MAS now prompts more clearly and insistently for MAS system passwords to be changed if any is left at the factory default. h. Several of the MAS setup scripts ("Create Tape Library Mount Points", "Show Mounts") have slightly different prompts and output. i. The MAS desktop digital clock no longer blinks every second; this change reduces the VNC network traffic considerably. j. In the MAS configuration program, when defining a new control unit clicking the "Submit Current Values and Specify Data for Another Control Unit" button would result in a blank screen instead of a new configuration screen. The following changes apply only to a MAS system using Centera tape library storage: k. The MAS Centera cache is now stored on two software-RAIDed disks for redundancy. l. QUERY SPACE now shows a single entry for all tape drives assigned to the same Centera, instead of an entry for each drive. m. The setup of a PostgreSQL user and database has been changed and automated to some degree. Refer to the MAS Centera User's Guide for more information. The following changes apply only to a MAS system connected to a Unisys mainframe: n. When connected to a Unisys mainframe, the MAS now recognizes the "file-protect" indication in the Load Display mount request ('F' in the last position), and mounts the requested tape "ring-out". o. When connected to a Unisys mainframe, the MAS can be configured to treat a request for an unknown volser as a scratch request. This can be used to force a "wrong reel" message on the Unisys console for the operator to take action, rather than leave an outstanding unsatisfied mount request. To invoke this option, a new parameter must be added to the MAS configuration file: UnknownIsScratch Yes The default is No, meaning ignore the unknown volser request (as the MAS has always operated before). The GUI configuration program does not support this new parameter, so it must be added with any text editor. It can be inserted anywhere near the top of the file with the other global parameters such as TRACELEVEL. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS releases 4.00-2 and 4.00-11: 1. Problems fixed in this release: a. The MAS application might abend if a Centera-resident virtual tape volume containing thousands of files were to be modified by the Host. b. The MAS sense data would fail to indicate that the MAS was IDRC- capable under these specific conditions: sense immediately following a sense, or sense immediately following a channel-initiated system or device reset. c. If a small amount of data (less than about 32K) was appended to an existing virtual tape volume, future usages of that volume would not be able to take advantage of the "fast locate/fast FSF" indexing normally present on a MAS virtual tape. The symptom would be occurrences of the message: "MAS428I: Device devicename possibly lengthy operation (Locate/FSF) begun" and locates and FSF commands might take a long time to complete, depending on the volume size. d. The MAS application might abend when exiting, if tracing is turned on at the time. e. 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 x'01' after a 110 second timeout. f. 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. g. Detection, recovery, and reporting of communication failures between the MAS and the Centera and the MAS/Centera database server have been improved. h. Clicking on the "Configure MAS Devices" desktop icon would occasionally result in an abend of the configuration program. i. Under certain circumstances during mounting of a scratch volume, the message "MAS483E: Error renaming volume SCRTCH (filename): No such file or dir" might be displayed, while the mount continued normally. j. A Read-Backwards of compressed data would return data of incorrect length. 2. Other changes in the release: a. The AWS utilities package has been updated to version 3.4. Minor changes were made to some messages. b. 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. c. A new command has been added to display information about all the channel paths that have been established between the Hosts(s) and the MAS. The syntax is: QUERY PATHS This command replaces and provides more information than the older SHOW CHANNEL PATHS command, See the MAS User's Guide (9th Edition) for more information. d. MAS-Centera messages now have MAS message numbers (MAS6nnx) and are listed in the help text. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following changes were made between MAS release 3 and MAS release 4.00-2: Note: The following list summarizes some of the most significant changes between MAS release 3 and MAS release 4. Please refer to the MAS User's Guide for full documentation of all the new MAS features and changes added since MAS release 3. 1. The MVS UIM and Utilities package has been updated to version 1.7. The most significant change has been increasing the number of devices supported per control unit to 256. See the README.TXT file on the Utilities CD for more information. 2. The Linux AWS utilities package has been updated to version 3.3. The only change in this release was to support SuSE Linux as well as Red Hat Linux. 3. The Bus-Tech VSE Utilities package is still at version 4.0.3. There have been no changes since MAS release 3. 4. Some major changes in this release: a. The MAS now supports multiple channel paths to each of its devices. This allows a MAS device to be shared by multiple systems and LPARS over multiple channels. Device definitions have been simplified on the MAS; you now configure only the Control Unit and Unit Addresses for each device. The MAS automatically, dynamically determines the channel adapter, LPAR, and link addresses as the Host(s) establish connections. b. Many of the MAS initial setup and configuration tasks have changed considerably or have been automated to some degree. Refer to the User's Guide for more information. c. VOLSER prefixes can now be associated with specific scratch tape synonyms. This allows you to configure the MAS to select different SCRTCH volumes for different scratch pool names. --- end of README.TXT file -----------------------------------------------