Hey everybody. In the wake of Dave's email about UI changes, and the feelings of people on this list, I thought I'd pose a question to y'all.

Currently, if you are running a dump on your console, and you hit end of tape or end of media, dump will pop up a message that says:

toaster1> dump 0ufX rst0a *.o,*core* /vol/vol0/home DUMP: Dumping tape file 1 on rst0a ...

DUMP: Change tape file on toaster1. DUMP: Mount tape file #2 DUMP: Is the new tape file mounted and ready to go?: ("yes" or "no")

[If you respond "yes", it will write data to the tape device rst0a.] [If you respond "no", it will say:] DUMP: Do you want to abort?: ("yes" or "no")

-> A problem that some people have raised is that there is no way to -> try to dump to rst1a or rst2a at this point They'd like to be able to -> write to a different device, but the question/answer framework will -> not currently allow you to do that.

On the other hand, restore says: toaster2> restore rfD rst0a /vol/vol1/home_new

...

RESTORE: Mount tape file 2 on toaster2 RESTORE: Enter ``none'' if there are no more tapes RESTORE: otherwise enter tape device name (default: rst0a)

The benefit, of course, is that you can specify a different device if you desire.

So here's the question - if we unified the interface for dump/restore on this point, would the added flexibility outweigh the pain of changing scripts? (This would come out in the next major release).

So it would look like: toaster1> dump 0ufX rst0a *.o,*core* /vol/vol0/home DUMP: Dumping tape file 1 on rst0a

...

DUMP: Mount tape file #2 on toaster1 DUMP: Enter ``none'' if there are no more tapes DUMP: otherwise enter tape device name (default: rst0a)

(Note: it changed the "Mount tape file" message as well as the Q and A).

Or, as an alternative, would people prefer something like:

DUMP: Change tape file on toaster1. DUMP: Mount tape file #2 DUMP: Is the new tape file mounted and ready to go?: ("yes" or "no") no DUMP: Enter ``none'' if there are no more tapes DUMP: otherwise enter tape device name (default: rst0a)

so that you could continue to respond "yes" and see no behavior change? But you would still get the advantage of being able to specify a new drive. The negative, of course, is that dump and restore ask the questions differently...

So three questions: 1) Would you like to see: A) Unify dump and restore interface for asking questions B) The alternative I gave C) Something else entirely 2) If we did change this in the next major release, where would you like to see the "HEY! We changed this!" note? 3) Other suggestions for dump/restore UI changes you'd like?

Thanks for reading this and thanks for your feedback, Stephen Manley Data Availability and Management Pollster