Tape Drive Failed During Backup - No Halt

[Jerry Adams <Jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Friday evening my boss was finishing up the end-of-day backup, which goes to our 6384 (cartridge) device.  I have a procedure that checks the veracity of the backup after it has finished; for the first time it came back as failed.

I was not able to get at the system (5320 running V5R4) until this morning.  There is no job log for the process (which will be changed real quick), but the History showed:

Job 429669/QPM400/Q1PPMSUB started on 09/24/10 at 16:00:51 in subsystem QSYSW
Job 429669/QPM400/Q1PPMSUB ended on 09/24/10 at 16:00:52; 1 seconds used; end
Session to device C4 ended normally.
Service Agent is analyzing your system product activity log entries.
Job 429657/QUSER/QZDASOINIT ended on 09/24/10 at 16:15:51; 1 seconds used; en
Timeout on device TAP01. [CPF415F]
Device description TAP01 is not usable at this time. [CPI5922]
Receiving Will Be Terminated
Receiving Will Be Terminated
Command did not complete on device TAP01. [CPF6797]

Message CPI5922 said to vary the device off and then on, and report a problem if that did not work.  WRKCFGSTS *DEV showed the device in a FAILED status.  Varying it off and on put it in a Varied on status.  I have exercised the drive this morning, and it seems to be working.

Now for my questions.

First, why did the system not display an error message (this is an interactive job, by the way)?  I use MONMSG after the SAVLIB command but not for any of these messages.

Second,  I have never tried to MONMSG for more than one condition or set (such as MONMSG MSGID(CPF9801 CPF9810) EXEC(DO) ).  Is it possible (allowed) to have multiple MONMSG groups after a command that, for example, branch to different error portions of the program, or call other programs?  Such as:

DLTF FILE(JERRY)
MONMSG MSGID(CPF2105) EXEC(GOTO CMDLBL(NOTFOUND))
MONMSG MSGID(CPF0675) EXEC(GOTO CMDLBL(INUSE))

Thanks.

Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
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