Report of uncataloged Tapes

pmvino · New User Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 20 Location: india

Hi,

I would like to know a list of all uncataloged tapes available on all volums. Could any one help me, how can we do this?

Thanks,
Vinodh

expat · Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 4:08 pm

Talk to your storage management team, however I'm not sure what you mean by uncataloged tapes

pmvino · New User Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 20 Location: india

Few days back, the system management peoples ran a batch job - to uncatalog all the tapes (not referred for long time) from the volume. Ie the tape will not found in VTOC. but they are physically exists. Now I would like to create the report of all those datasets.

Thanks,
Vinodh P M

Robert Sample · Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 4:47 pm

expat · Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 5:00 pm

Yes, I would rather hope that they did keep the output from the job(s)

pmvino · New User Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 20 Location: india

I am OK in mainframe. But not in English.

I have to put TSO option 3.4 instead of VTOC!

Who ran the batch job to uncatalog the dataset, is no more in my organization. Here we are doing R&D to foundout what he did.

The Aim in this requirement is, No one is aware that what are the tapes are uncataloged and where it was stored. My organization is simply spending money to those volumes.

So, now they want a list of a all uncataloged tapes in all volumes. Do you have any sample code / any untility can do this job? If you share your help, that will be very helpful for me!

Thanks,
Vinodh P M

dbzTHEdinosauer · Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 6:08 pm

actually your english is muuucch better than mainframe knowledge.

i think most people are trying to decide at what remedial level they should start their suggestions.

me, i'd say, get a manual inventory of all tapes (volume serial numbers),
and get that into a file.
(the only time this info changes is whenever you throw a tape away or buy a new one).

then you can do your 3.4 (non vtoc list

)
and compare the two.

expat · Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 6:43 pm

Oh boy, this sounds like a real cracker

You really must speak to your storage management people. If the tapes are physical, you have a fighting chance of recovering them, if that is indeed what you want to do.

Physical tapes - Just so long as they have not been through the TMS scratch process and have since been used, you might be able to save some of them. It really is a pig of a problem to identify the tapes that have been scratched though.

One possibility - if you have a catalog backup of all catalogs prior to this incident it may, and I say may, be possible to go through these backups to see the status of the catalog prior to this. It will involve using IDCAMS to recatalog the tapes and possibly the TMS utilities to remove them from SCR status.

Virtual tapes - If I were tasked with doing a recovery here, I'd be busy sending my CV out to every agency available. Virtual tapes are usually rendered useless the moment they are set to scratch status as the LABEL info is deleted from within the VTS sub system.

I wish you all the best with this one, I really do.

pmvino · New User Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 20 Location: india

Thanks a lot for help.

We contacted IBM and got a way to go...! They are having one utility DFSMSrmm -> Option 1 : Users -> Option 1 : Volume.

This is listing me all volume serial no for tape - it is attached to my Lpar. Option 2 -> it lists all dataset in that volume.

Here I can findout whether the tape is cataloged / un-cataloged?

This is what, I need! To findout all tapes Vs All volume.

Thanks,
Vinod P M

dbzTHEdinosauer · Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 7:57 pm

great,
thanks for the follow-up.

i am sure this will help someone.