I currently have about 191 Barcodes that nebackup froze out that I would like to reuse. We took the barcodes and applied them all to brand new tapes. I've taken the necessary steps to unfreeze the media id and expire it. In netbackup the media looks like its fine and OK to be used. The problem is if you try to right anything to the media it freezes the tape again. If you unfreeze it again and try to run a label or erase on the tape it will never properly mount and received the following error in the activity monitor. "Error requesting media (tpreq) (98)" This only happens to all those media numbers that got frozen, even though we replaced the tapes. I understand we can just give the media new barcode labels, but because of the proprietary system we use to track the tapes, we would like to avoid using different barcodes for the tapes. I've been up and down the forums trying everything from following the tech notes for completely removing a tape from the Database to a simple unfreeze command. I've run out of ideas to try and to google. We are currentlyh running Netbackup 5.1 Unix OS Thanks for you time.

Sunbird might be onto something. when using barcodes you should make sure you use the correct barcode. A00000L4 means it is a barcode for a LTO4 tape. You should try to make the match. But what you need to check now. What kind of tape drives do you have. Let us say you have LT04's. When you put those 5 tapes in and did the inventory did them come in the same as your tape drives? If your tape drives are set up as hcart3 then you need to make sure the tapes when added as new come in as hcart3. check your barcode rules for this.

Re-using frozen barcodes

J_H_Is_gone
Level 6
16 years ago
Are they in a robot?

as you are now using new tapes.
I would delete the tapes from netbackup.

So - tapes are in the libary - leave them there
in netbackup right click and delete the tape ( you can only do this if it has NO assigned date. meaning that all images that netbackup thinks is on the tape is gone.)

Now inventory the library and the tapes will be added back into netbackup as new tapes.

Are they really new tapes or is there a chance that something had already been written on them.
When you do the bplabel you have to make sure that it has no assigned date and that you UNCHECK the check Verify media label.

if you still cannot label them, you need to look at the problem logs and see what it is telling you the reason for freezing. If you know the reason they you can fix the issue.
Srikanth_Gubbal
Level 6
16 years ago
go to /usr/openv/netbackup/db/media, inside that directory you will find a file call errors, this is the file, where all the media errors are stored, bptm will will refer to this file before assigning it the media for backup.
now as a test case, take a media id from the pool of frozen tapes, now search for that string in the file errors and delete. now try using that tape for backup.
let me know the results.

more explanation.

When a read, write, or position error occurs on tape, it is difficult to know whether the error is caused by media or by the drive itself. This is because the only error produced comes from the operating system, and only reports, "I/O ERROR". In an attempt to prevent bad media or drives from causing all backups in a given timeframe to fail, NetBackup developed a method to attempt to determine, based on past history, if a media or drive is bad.

Each time an I/O error occurs on a read, write, or position, bptm logs the error into an errors file. Each entry consists of the time of the error, the media ID, the drive index, and the type of error.

Sample entries in this file are:
05/21/06 04:15:17 A00167 4 WRITE_ERROR
05/26/06 12:37:47 A00168 4 READ_ERROR

Each time an entry is made, past entries in the file are scanned to determine if the same media id or drive has had the same type of error in the past "n" hours, where "n" is the TIME_WINDOW. The default time window is 12 hours. The command to freeze a media or down a drive does not normally occur the first time the error is encountered. There are two other parameters, MEDIA_ERROR_THRESHOLD and DRIVE_ERROR_THRESHOLD, the default value for each being 3.

so based on this, if you remove the lines containing the media id from errors file, netbackup will use that media for backup.
shaggin_wagon
Level 2
16 years ago
Thanks for the input everyone.

I took another look at the robot (StorEdge L700) to make sure I had the media in there. I ejected about 5 of the tapes and deleted them from the database. I reapplied their labels to 5 brand new tapes. I inventoried the robot and the tapes were re-added. I attempted to do a label and quick erase on them, but they are still failing out with status 98 error.

I took Srikanth's advice and checked that error file. I did a search of all 5 of the tapes I had relabeled and none of them were in the database. I did a search of about 15 other of the frozen tapes and I only found 1 tape with an error. I moved and renamed the file as well to see if that would make a difference and it did not.

I am not sure if this will help at all, but I also ran a robtest on the tapes I relabeled. I tried moving them from their slots to Tape Drive 4. All 5 resulted in the following error:

move_medium failed
sense key = 0x5, asc = 0x30, ascq = 0x0, INCOMPATIBLE MEDIUM INSTALLED

I then tried to move a known functional tape to drive 4 and it moved successfully, so I knew the drive was OK.

I checked the media for the Media Type, Volume Pool, etc. of the 5 tapes and they were setup exactly like the tapes that work fine.
sunbird
Level 4
16 years ago
The barcode label is preventing the tape library from mounting the media into a tapedrive. To confirm, remove the label and you will be able to use robtest to mount it into a tapedrive.

There may be an additional character on the label that the barcode reader is reading, which it determines to be incompatiable with the tapedrive.

Solution: Use different barcode labels.
J_H_Is_gone
Level 6
16 years ago
Sunbird might be onto something.

when using barcodes you should make sure you use the correct barcode.
A00000L4 means it is a barcode for a LTO4 tape.

You should try to make the match.

But what you need to check now.

What kind of tape drives do you have. Let us say you have LT04's.

When you put those 5 tapes in and did the inventory did them come in the same as your tape drives?

If your tape drives are set up as hcart3 then you need to make sure the tapes when added as new come in as hcart3. check your barcode rules for this.
shaggin_wagon
Level 2
16 years ago
Hinch nailed it. I never realized it before, but I compared the tapes that work to the ones that don't and the barcodes on the ones that did work. The ones that work had the L1 or L2 at the end while the ones that didn't just had the the Tape Number.

I came to find out that they relabeled a bunch of tapes. It just so happened all the ones that were relableled were the ones netbackup wouldn't touch. We relabeled all of them with L2 at the end and it is back up and running.

I guess the identifier at the end really never struck since I only ever saw 6 digits of the barcode in netbackup.

Thanks a lot everyone for the help.

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