Frozen tape

[simz123]

Hi, I have 2 frozen tapes.

i checked the tape logs on Admin Console for the Media/tape and it shows "media id xxx load operation reported an error".

I checked the \veritas\netbackup\db\media\errors and found the following:

03/07/18 14:29:26 502322 10 POSITION_ERROR 0003
03/07/18 15:04:04 502322 10 POSITION_ERROR 0003
03/08/18 10:16:14 504921 10 WRITE_ERROR 0003
03/23/18 10:54:23 502513 10 POSITION_ERROR 0003
04/23/18 15:01:36 500780 1 WRITE_ERROR 0014
04/23/18 15:01:39 500780 1 TAPE_ALERT 0014 0x34001000 0x00000000
04/30/18 06:44:28 502412 -1 RESERVE_ERROR 0004 0 1 0 0
05/07/18 06:00:51 500529 -1 RESERVE_ERROR 0006 0 1 0 0
05/07/18 06:54:11 505158 -1 RESERVE_ERROR 0002 0 1 0 0

Does this mean something to anyone?Should i be looking somewhere else?

Is there a way to find out what drive was used for this particulat tape?

I have used ROBTEST to move tapes from slot to drives in the library and everything seems to work there. Drives dont need cleaning either as per the SL Console. Automatic cleaning is enabled.

[Marianne]

About vmdareq -

The command without any options is supposed to display text output of shared drive status on all media servers in SSO config.

Here is an old Symantec doc (seems this info is no longer included in Veritas docs) with some vmdareq commands and what output looks like: 

https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH1464.html

[Genericus]

I have said this before, FROZEN tapes can have many causes. Generally it is FROZEN because it failed too many times.

Check tape - physically remove tape, open slide door and verify leader pin is seated properly and tape is not slack. Check for other obvious issues, like cracked or damaged case.

Check drives - what is the firmware of the drive? There have been versions of my tape drives where tapes labeled under one set of firmware will not load under the new version. Or tapes labeled by one drive will not load in another.

Check history - does your tape have data on it? Does it load properly on one drive not another?

If you have a tape stuck in a drive, I have had NetBackup try tape after tape, failing to load them and freezing EVERY scratch tape I had, the root case was a tape stuck in the drive NetBackup did not know about.

Sometimes tape issues are the tape, sometimes the drive, sometimes the operator ( I have had operators put tapes in upside down), some drives/robots do not detect that, lol