__________________________________________________________________________ TapeGen Version 1.14 User's Guide WARNING: TAPEGEN IS NOT SUPPORTED ON AIX VERSION 5L. THE TAPEGEN SERVICE TOOL IS SUPPORTED ON AIX VERSION 4 ONLY. International Business Machines ________________________________________________________________________ August 1998 This edition of the TapeGen Users Guide applies to the tapegen utility and to all subsequent releases of this product until otherwise indicated in new releases or technical newsletters. The following paragraph does not apply to the United Kingdom or any country where such provisions are inconsistent with local law: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION PROVIDES THIS MANUAL "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some states do not allow disclaimer of express or implied warranties in certain transactions; therefore, this statement may not apply to you. IBM does not warrant that the contents of this publication whether individually or as one or more groups, will meet your requirements or that the publication is error#free. This publication could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically made to the information herein; these changes will be incorporated in new editions of the publication. IBM may make improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described in this publication at any time. It is possible that this publication may contain references to, or information about, IBM products (machines and programs), programming, or services that are not announced in your country. Such references or information must not be construed to mean that IBM intends to announce such IBM products, programming, or services in your country. Any reference to an IBM licensed program in this publication is not intended to state or imply that you can use only IBM's licensed program. You can use any functionally equivalent program instead. Requests for copies of this publication and for technical information about IBM products should be made to your IBM Authorized Dealer or your IBM Marketing Representative. Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 1994. All rights reserved. Notice to U.S. Government Users # Documentation Related to Restricted Rights # Use, duplication or disclosure is subject to restrictions set forth in GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corporation. _________________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents About This Book Chapter 1. TapeGen Introduction Prerequisites Chapter 2. Downloading And Installing TapeGen Chapter 3. Using TapeGen Appendix A. How TapeGen Works ________________________________________________________________________ About This Book This book contains information on the TapeGen service tool. It includes an overview of the service and procedural information needed to access and use the tool. TapeGen is a command line utility enabling you to create a stacked tape containing SMIT installable fixes. Who Should Use This Book This book is for the user responsible for receiving and installing software fixes for AIX operating environments. How to Use This Book This book contains the following chapters: Chapter 1, "TapeGen Introduction," describes the features of the service. Chapter 2, "Downloading and Installing TapeGen," provides a procedure for downloading and installing the tool from a file server. Chapter 3, "Using TapeGen," provides a procedure for running TapeGen. Appendix A, "How TapeGen Works", provides information on how TapeGen works. Trademarks and Acknowledgements The following trademarks and acknowledgements apply to this information: AIX is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. Related Documents FixDist User's Guide ________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 1. TapeGen Introduction TapeGen is a service tool from IBM that enables you to create a stacked tape containing SMIT installable fixes. You create a stack file that lists all the images you want stacked onto a tape and TapeGen does the rest. Prerequisites The PTF images must be installable through SMIT. This means the fixes must be in installp format. The tape device must have the block size set to 512. Create the stack file. It must contain a list of PTF images that are to be written to tape. ________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 2. Downloading And Installing TapeGen To obtain TapeGen or read the user guide, simply download it via anonymous ftp from any of the servers listed below. Many of these sites are also web servers (example URL: http://service.software.ibm.com) and FixDist servers. TapeGen may be downloaded from one of the following anonymous ftp servers: United States service.software.ibm.com 198.17.57.66 Canada rwww.aix.can.ibm.com 204.138.188.126 Germany www.ibm.de 192.109.81.2 Japan fixdist.yamato.ibm.co.jp 202.32.4.20 Nordic ftp.nordic.ibm.com 193.12.214.80 United Kingdom ftp.europe.ibm.com 193.129.186.2 The TapeGen client along with the user guide is located in the anonymous ftp directory /aix/tools/tapegen. Below is an example of downloading and installing the tool and the Postscript user guide. Note: The following procedure must be performed as root. 1. Change to your /tmp directory. cd /tmp 2. Download the tool and documentation. The tool comes with the user guide in plain text as /usr/lpp/tapegen/tapegen.text. ftp service.software.ibm.com >login: anonymous >password: "email" (example: johndoe@) > >bin >cd /aix/tools/tapegen >get tapegen.tar.Z (TapeGen tool in compressed tar format) >get tapegen.ps.Z (User guide in compressed Postscript) >quit 3. Install the tool into the /usr file system. You must install it from the / (root) directory in order to access the online help and preserve your .netrc file. cd / (change directory to the root) zcat /tmp/tapegen.tar.Z | tar -xpvf - (uncompress and untar) ________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 3. Using TapeGen TapeGen may be executed by typing the following : tapegen -l stack_file -s fix_dir [-d device] [-w work_dir] Note: The flags encased in brackets [ ] are optional flags. Descriptions of the applicable flags are listed below: -l Name of the stack file. One PTF image per line. -s Location of the PTF images. -d Tape device name. The default is /dev/rmt0. -w Location where temporary files will be created. The default is /tmp. Once the command is executed you will be asked to verify the parameters, see example below: AIX TapeGen Utility Version 1.13 The following parameters will be used to create a stacked tape: STACK FILE stack.list PTF IMAGES DIRECTORY /images/32 TAPE DEVICE /dev/rmt0 TAPE TYPE 8MM WORK DIRECTORY /tmp Do you want to proceed with the above parameters (y/n)? If the parameters are correct and TapeGen is executed then the following informational message will be displayed on the screen. Verifying if the tape device block size is set to 512...done Insert a writeable tape cartridge into /dev/rmt0 and press enter Press enter to start the process. TapeGen will display several informational messages on the screen to verify the steps of writing to the tape. ________________________________________________________________________ Appendix A. How TapeGen Works The Concept of "Stacked Tapes" TapeGen puts PTF images onto tape in a format that enables SMIT or installp to update your licensed programs directly from the tape without needing to copy the fix package onto your hard disk first. This tape format is called "stacked tape" because the images are stacked one after another on the tape. SMIT (installp) requires more than just a stacking of PTF images one after another. The install process reads a table of content file in order to find the locations of the images on the tape. The Format of "Stacked Tapes" The first and second image on the tape are reserved, empty images. These reserved areas are not used on fix tapes. They are used by bootable product installation tapes. The third image is a special plain text file called the table-of-contents or toc. As the name implies it contains content information about the images that are on the tape. The remaining images are the actual PTF images. If FixDist is used to created the stack file, they will be ordered on the tape in such a way as to limit the amount of "tape play". Tape play is the process of skipping images to get to another image. The Building of "Stacked Tapes" TapeGen uses the stack file to determine what PTF images will be put on the tape. Then TapeGen verifies that all the images are available to be stacked. Next, each PTF image is opened and it's toc fragment is extracted. All the toc fragments are brought together in an ordered format to create the table-of-contents file that will become the third image on the tape. After rewinding the tape, we begin the actual writing to the tape. We call upon dd (device dump) to write each image to the tape. When the last image is done, the building of the stacked tape is complete.