Chenthil   250 pts.  |   Sep 21 2009  2:20PM GMT

From the console press

Shift + Esc

you will get a system request line below the command line

option 2 will end your backup.

Lovemyi   1470 pts.  |   Sep 21 2009  2:21PM GMT

If the tape is not advancing during a SAVSYS that is because it is collecting the information to save to the tape. You need to wait for it to complete getting the information it needs and then it will advance.

You will not see the tape advance on the console screen like you do saving libraries, DLO folders or directories.

If the tape is indeed bad when the system tries to write to the tape after it gets all the data, it will return an error message and you will get a message waiting on the bottom of the screen. To see the message press Shift and ESC at the same time and place a 6 on the broken blue line at the bottom of the screen to see the messages. This will show you the error like it has a bad tape or is waiting for a tape, etc.

Hope this helps.

Lovemyi

Slack400   1165 pts.  |   Sep 22 2009  4:44PM GMT

Agree with Lovemyi.
A tape error will register a failure and kick back a message.
If you’re not seeing that then the backup is still collecting data.

If you’re running an OPT 21 save make sure you’re not selecting
Print system information . . . . Y
that will add a lot of time to your backups.

CarterC19   170 pts.  |   Sep 22 2009  4:52PM GMT

I’d advocate some more patience; if there are I/O’s assiciated with the job you can be pretty sure that it is accumulating data even if you don’t see the tape physically advancing. A lot of the time that save jobs spend is actually spent gathering lists of things to save, where they are, and so on.

Additionally, and just as anecdotal evidence only, I have had mixed results from cancelling a save job. Sometimes bad things happen; jobs hang forever (or seemingly so), device descriptions get damaged, I cancel a save job only as an absolute last resort.

Whatis23   4040 pts.  |   Sep 22 2009  7:41PM GMT

If the current time for the SAVSYS is 2 or 3 times longer than normal and you have not installed any group or single PTFs, then you probably have an issue. In the past, i’ve had the operator eject the tape and hopefully invoke an error. On perhaps 3 occasions it did (unable to write to tape i believe?) and the operator just retried and all was well. One instance though, after waiting another 20 mintues, he called IBM and the rep suggested an IPL. The SAVSYS ran fine thereafter. Since all 4 eventually completed normally (though it ran 4 times longer than the norm), IBM never gave a satisfactiory explanation and repeated follow up calls produced nothing. No surprise there.

DanD   1890 pts.  |   Sep 25 2009  6:49PM GMT

There have been a lot of Save/Restore PTFs out for v5r4 lately. I would make sure I was current on PTFs. Also, take the recommendations about waiting a reasonable time before ending the job to heart. iSeries saves mark each object with the last save iinformation as the save occurs. When you end a save job it has to reverse all of that information back off the objects as the iSeries is very serious about data integrity. It is best to get the job to error and give it a retry with a new tape otherwise it can take as long to end as it did to get to the point of failure.