The current state of the EGTS must be halted otherwise the request will fail.

This procedure is used by applications to return an access key obtained by a previous Claim procedure to the server. The access key is now invalid and any attempt in the future to access the server using this key will fail.
The Eurogam server only accepts the Free request when in the halted state (that is data acquisition is not in progress to the server). All open files are closed, all tapes currently loaded into tape drives are unloaded and all system resources are released. The Tape Server thus reverts to an initial state and next expects a Claim request.
The server logs the result of the procedure into the System Log.