Forum Discussion

_tron_'s avatar
_tron_
Level 2
12 years ago

Inserting Tapes Manually

I'm trying to script in Perl using the command "vmupdate." Sometimes we have tapes that get ejected from a vault mixed with tapes that were going to be inserted as scratch on our Tape Library. The problem we get is if we run "vmupdate" using the flag -empty_map, it will inject all the media to the Tape Library. The reason we do this is to avoid conflict with the TLD. Is there  a command other than vmchange that would allow me to insert tapes manually? 

example:

vmchange -res -multi_inject -w -ml media_id:media_id -verbose -rn robot_number -rt robot_type -rh server

This will take all tapes in MAP and insert them. It doesn't matter if I use the -ml flag. So the final question:

Is there a way to manually inject tapes by specifying barcodes?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

AIX 6.1 

Netbackup Master Server 7.1.0.4

7.1.x and Earlier
AIX
Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
Best Practice
NetBackup
Script
  • Will_Restore's avatar
    Will_Restore
    12 years ago

    You cannot use vmupdate to inject one or more tapes and leave others in the MAP.  You can move individual tapes with robtest  (for example: m p1 s22 ) but then you have potential conflict with slot assignment and you'd still have to run vmupdate to resync NetBackup inventory with the library.

     

    It would so much simpler to pull all the outgoing vault tapes before inserting the scratch volumes.

5 Replies

Sort By
  • _tron_'s avatar
    _tron_
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    I get the information of tapes in the i/o slots using the following:

    echo "s i" | tldtest -r /path/to/dev | grep Barcode

  • Will_Restore's avatar
    Will_Restore
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    You cannot use vmupdate to inject one or more tapes and leave others in the MAP.  You can move individual tapes with robtest  (for example: m p1 s22 ) but then you have potential conflict with slot assignment and you'd still have to run vmupdate to resync NetBackup inventory with the library.

     

    It would so much simpler to pull all the outgoing vault tapes before inserting the scratch volumes.

  • _tron_'s avatar
    _tron_
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    Thank you. I just wanted to verify. At least now I'm headed towards the right direction. 

  • RonCaplinger's avatar
    RonCaplinger
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    If your library supports the feature, you might consider auto-importing tapes from the I/O door as soon as you put your tapes in and close it.

    Try adding AUTO_UPDATE_ROBOT to your /usr/openv/volmgr/vm.conf file on the robot control host, and then I think you need to cycle ltid, or stop/start NetBackup services on that media server.  The robot will send a message to NBU and NBU will initiate an import on the robot automatically, it will put the tapes away, and send the new tape info back to NBU, which will update its EMM database.  Then you wouldn't have to concern yourself with tapes being left in the door when your eject process runs.

    You may also need an EEB applied, as I think 7.1.0.4 had a bug with this feature that prevented tpaes from auto-importing.

  • Will_Restore's avatar
    Will_Restore
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    AUTO_UPDATE is a nice feature (we use it too) but it will inject all media in the MAP and not just desired scratch media.