Forum Discussion

RonCaplinger's avatar
RonCaplinger
Level 6
16 years ago

Media contents from the catalog

If this is a repeat post, I apologize, I haven't found this anywhere else.

I have a media ID that, according to the Media List in the NBU GUI, contains 297 valid images and over 1TB of space.

When I search in the Catalog for the media ID, using search dates that include the Time Assigned and Last Written dates from the Media List ,and trying Copy 1, Copy 2, etc., no images are found in the catalog.

Short of loading the tape in the library and running bpmedialist, is there any other way to query the catalog to see what images NBU thinks is on the tape?
7.1.x and Earlier
Backup and Recovery
NetBackup
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  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    16 years ago
    What version of NetBackup are you running? Prior to 6.x it was quite possible to have inconsistency between image, media and volume database.
    BTW - media list report in the GUI and bpmedialist does exactly the same thing.
    Media Contents (bpverify) report will mount the tape and read image headers.
  • Reagan's avatar
    Reagan
    Level 5
    16 years ago
    If you do a catalog search on the media going back to the latest date possible and find no images, the images are not in the catalog.

    I'm guessing that the images expired and got removed from the catalog.

    If this is the case, then you would need to import the tape back into NetBackup to recover the expired images to NetBackup.

    If the images are not in the catalog, NetBackup does not know about them. 

    In the admin guides, there is some documentation about importing a tape with NetBackup from the catalog tab.




  • RonCaplinger's avatar
    RonCaplinger
    Level 6
    16 years ago
    Quebek,
    I had tried that first, but got an error from NBU:  "allocation failed".

    Marianne,
    We're on 6.5.3.  I ahd tried the "bpmedialist -mcontents" command, too,  and it loads and reads the tape contents directly, not the catalog.  Couldn't find any options in the command ref that would just report back on the catalog without loading the tape.

    Reagan,
    I do understand how the images are deleted from the catalog, but when that occurs, the media shows in the media list in the GUI with no valid images.  We have been doing a lot of tape imports lately, and while that is an option, that could take a very long time to go through one tape, based on our experience.  I'm trying to avoid an import or reading the tape directly, mostly because I've found 5 tapes like this one.

    All,
    I think we have a corrupt record in our database and the media list in the GUI that shows 297 "valid images" is probably incorrect.  That is why I'm trying to confirm there is no data on the tape that we need.  Does anyone have any ideas on how we can locate the images stored on this tape in the catalog?
  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    16 years ago
    Hi Ron

    Quebek is right, to report back on the catalog without loading the tape, you need to run
    bpimmedia -mediaid <id>
    The error you are seeing is possibly due to a timeout. See TechNote:
    http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/273884.htm

  • J_H_Is_gone's avatar
    J_H_Is_gone
    Level 6
    16 years ago
    Images on Media Report
    The Images on Media report lists the contents of the media as recorded in the NetBackup image catalog. You can generate this report for any type of media (including disk) and filter it according to client, media ID, or path.
    # cd /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd
    # ./bpimmedia -U [-client <client_name>] [-mediaid <media_id>]


    I would just do mediaid and see what it comes back with.
  • RonCaplinger's avatar
    RonCaplinger
    Level 6
    16 years ago
    The command that worked was:
    bpimmedia -mediaid 001381 -d 05/01/2009 -e 05/31/2009

    This shortened the search time.  I was able to confirm it worked on a tape that did have data, and it produced a listing of images.  But when I ran the command on the 5 tapes that we were questioning, there is no data being reported.  They are, indeed, scratch tapes.

    thanks everyone!