About the Diskcore and Tapecore mailing lists
These lists are for discussions or requests about disk or tape storage and do not replace, or allow you to bypass, normal methods for technical support. Many experts in their fields from within and without IBM post here, and answer questions, so it is a great way of building your professional network, and getting questions answered.
Please check the reference database before making a request for references. Remember, a well researched question will elicit more answers than something that is poorly worded, or not researched at all, and may incur the gentle wrath of your fellow posters, or they may not bother replying at all !
- IBM Confidential material may not be sent to the lists (take great care in ensuring that any note does not accidentally have confidential material attached).
- This is a great way to look for references that you may not find in the IBM Customer Reference database or elsewhere.
- This is not, nor was it ever intended to be, an official IBM information source.
- This is not to be used for disseminating IBM flashes or statements of support to the field - however, pointers to the official repositories of such material are acceptable.
- We strongly suggest that any and all information learned should be verified with an OFFICIAL IBM source before bringing the information forward to customers.
Who is eligible?
The list is open only to IBM employees and authorised IBM Business Partners. If you are unsure if you work for IBM there is not much we can do to help other than suggest you look at your ID badge ;) However, if you are unsure if you are an authorised business partner and therefore eligible, refer to the IBM Business Partner Locator. If your company does not have an entry, you are not eligible, no exceptions will be made.
Subscribing to the lists
First, you must subscribe to the lists. Note that all subscriptions will go into a queue to be approved.
Send an email either to diskcore-subscribe@hursley.ibm.com or tapecore-subscribe@hursley.ibm.com with just the word subscribe in the body of email (NOT the subject line which must be blank). You will receive a subscription confirmation email when your subscription has been processed. You have to subscribe to the lists to be able to send and receive emails. If you send an email to the list and you have not subscribed, it will be discarded.
We do this for two reasons: we need to be able to prevent unauthorised use of the list and we need to protect you against spam. We also prevent email addresses from certain domains from joining the list for the same reasons. Please note that these domains include common free email providers as these are a major source of spam.
How to use the lists and list etiquette
To send a request, or a question, to the lists, all you need to do is to send an email to diskcore@hursley.ibm.com or tapecore@hursley.ibm.com . This email will automatically be distributed to everyone who is on the Diskcore or Tapecore list. You don't need to know who is on the list, you don't need to maintain a distribution list and you don't get lots of out-of-office replies. When you join, you will start to get messages immediately.
Lotus Notes did have a bug in the way that it handled mail replies. Often, if you reply to a message from diskcore, it will address your reply to diskcore-bounces@hursley.ibm.com. This will not reach the mailing list so please check the address before sending your mail.
Please remember that emails to the mailing list will be seen by thousands of people in IBM and in IBM Business Partners. Please make sure that you don't send administration requests to the list.
Managing your subscriptions
You can manage your own subscription to the list. You may need your list password (shown as my-password in the table below) which was sent to you when you joined the list. The password is not very secure - it is used only to stop other people changing your subscription.
Some of the more useful options are shown in the table. For tapecore, simply replace diskcore by tapecore in the addresses listed.
| What you want to do | Send an email to: | With this text in the email body (LEAVE SUBJECT LINE BLANK): |
| Subscribe - join the list | diskcore-subscribe@hursley.ibm.com | subscribe |
| Unsubscribe - leave the list | diskcore-leave@hursley.ibm.com | unsubscribe |
| Find out your password | diskcore-request@hursley.ibm.com | password |
| View your list membership options | diskcore-request@hursley.ibm.com | set show |
| Receive posts bundled together as a digest | diskcore-request@hursley.ibm.com | set authenticate my-password set digest mime |
| Stop receiving digests and get every post as it is sent | diskcore-request@hursley.ibm.com | set authenticate my-password set digest off |
| Temporarily stop receiving emails from the list (for example, when going on vacation) | diskcore-request@hursley.ibm.com | set authenticate my-password set delivery off |
| Resume getting emails after a temporary halt (for example, on return from vaction) | diskcore-request@hursley.ibm.com | set authenticate my-password set delivery on |
For example, here is the email you would send to subscribe to diskcore:
Again, the subject line MUST be blank.
The Diskcore and Tapecore Archives
We do keep archives of diskcore and tapecore. For obvious reasons they are behind the IBM firewall.
Diskcore Archives: http://ns.hursley.ibm.com/pipermail/diskcore/
Tapecore Archives: http://ns.hursley.ibm.com/pipermail/tapecore/
If you are having issues accessing the archives, do the following before contacting us: Go to advanced network settings in your favourite browser and under Automatic Proxy Configuration URL (or similar) add: http://hurgsa.ibm.com/~stirling/public/ns.pac
Questions or problems
In case of questions or problems, email the list administrator