All images on tape expired - But it doesn't move to scratch

[SvenKessler]

Hello,

i'm sorry for having again a question, but our Netbackup expert is on holiday and not reachable. But Murphy seems not to be on holiday :)

We have very limited free tapes in our library in the last days. So i tried to find the problem. I searched the volume pool "Datastore" where our active tapes are located. I have to say we have three retentions: 2 Weeks for daily backups, 3 weeks for weekly backups and 1 year for monthly backup. The montly backups are sent to a different location and therefore not in the library. We do not mix retentions on one tape. 

So i noticed in the Datastore volumepool many tapes which have a strange assigned time which should not be possible regarding our retention policy. For example there is a tape assigned in the end of august. 

So i did a search in the catalog with this tape ID from the beginning of 2010. The only result i get is this window message:

This window tells me that every backup image on this tape is already expired. But why is this tape located in the volume pool "Datastore"? Shouldn't it be moved to scratch automatically?  I can't move is to scratch because i can't move an assigned volume. 

EDIT:

Here a bpmedialist test:

C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd>bpmedialist.exe -m U959L4
Server Host = kielbk02

id rl images allocated last updated density kbytes restores

vimages expiration last read <------- STATUS ------->

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U959L4 2 46 08/21/2010 21:40 08/26/2010 09:10 hcart 1338553829 5

MPX 09/16/2010 09:10 09/02/2010 11:34 EXPIRED FULL

EDIT2:

Found this Bug Report TECH138266 and think this could be exact my problem. Will try the fix tomorrow.

Best regards

Sven

[J_H_Is_gone]

tape could be frozen.

If frozen it will keep the assigned time, even though it may have expired.

Frozen can be caused because it was write protected and NB tried to right to it.

Or it can be frozen because it had an error.

In the GUI right click tape and see if Unfreeze is an option.

If you unfreeze it the assigned date should go away.  But if it was frozen due to an error you may get another error when you try to write to it again.

[mph999]

The tape is expired, as bpmedialist is showing EXPIRED FULL.  This is normal.  What should then happen, is that the bptm cleanup job runs that actually expires the tape for real, the above could be read as "eligible for expiration when the bptm job comes along".

So, the question might be, why is it not expiring, the bptm cleanup runs either as part of the 12 hourly (by default) cleanup, or after backup jobs, I can't remember, but certainly it should have run since the tape expired on 16 Sept.  I think if the tape were frozen, we would see that in the status.

Do you have this file in place :

/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/NOexpire

(I may have the path wrong here, so perhaps you could do a search for NOexpire)

This would stop things expiring, but should only be in place if Symantec have instructed, due to some issue that they need to prevent data loss.  If it is there, do not remove it until you establish why it in place (else lots of things could expire that aren't meant to).

Try running this :

If the above file is not in place, try running ...

bptm -delete_all_expired

This is one of the NBU cleanup commands that runs, normally you don't see it, but it should clear up any tapes in the above state.  I'm not sure which version you are running, if the command doesn't run, try the older version bptm -delete_expired  - the command was changed at a version of NBU, but I cannot remember which.

In theory, bpmedialist should then not find the tape.

Martin

[SvenKessler]

Thank you all for the Infos. I think it was a broken Netbackup Installation. We are just changing from a Windows 2003 Netbackup System to a Windows 2008 R2 Netbackup System. I did a catalog restore on the new system. After the first update i saw all the hanging images getting expired. With the "bptm -delete_all_expired" command all the expired tapes moved to scratch. Seems to work now. I'll have a look in the next days.

Best regards

Sven

[mph999]

Excellent, thank you for the update, I am pleased things are now working.

Perhaps you may consider contacting Symantec to run an nbcc check.  As you have demonstrated there has been some, probably minor, issue, which may well be sorted now.  However, an nbcc check will ensure that all is in order.

Martin