There is another way of initializing tapes, beside the INITIALIZE-VOLUMES command, if a tape needs to be initialized before it is reserved again.
For this purpose, the FREE-VOLUMES command has to be issued with the operand INIT-FILE=*NONE. This allows tapes to be released which have still to be initialized.
If such a tape is later mounted for reservation by MARENUCP, MARENUCP carries out initialization.
The operator only needs to intervene if the tape cannot be allocated automatically. For example because the tape is in a device that is busy, in particular, if it is not mounted on the proposed device. In that case the message NKVT013 is issued. The operator has to respond with <tsn>.<mn>.
Restrictions
An automatic initialization cannot be performed in the following cases:
The reservation is made with the RESERVE-FREE-VOLUME command from MAREN or MARENADM.
If tapes are requested with the CREATE-FILE or CREATE-FILE-GENERATION command and the operand VOLUME=*ANY(NUMBER-OF-DEVICES=n), only the first tape can be initialized if n>1.
In these cases the volumes are reserved. Problems may occur when a new owner accesses a volume for the first time if the tape labels still contain a reservation period that has not expired or the user ID of a foreign owner. In this case, initialization must be performed manually by the operator.