Importing tapes - media ID issue

[SteveDown]

Hi folks,

My system, which sole purpose in life is for importing and duplicating LTO2 tapes to LTO6, is failing to import any tapes. I've successfully been through the process of building a couple of test platforms and trying the process out first so that I understand how everything works before I move onto live tapes.

Now that my live system is up and running, when I attempt to perform Phase 1 of the import process I get the following error:

Media mounted has media ID RG0038, but 0038L2 was requested. Must add RG0038 to Media Manager volume manager and retry. (the error is 4068)

I tried that of course and it failed. I subsequently found the following article in an attempt to resolve the problem and made a change to the barcode length, but that didn't work :(

http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/barcode-and-label-problems-imported-tapes

All the tapes have barcodes and the robot is able to read them fine when I perform an inventory.

Any ideas please?

Thanks....

[RonCaplinger · Accepted solution]

Check your Media ID generation rules in the NetBackup robot inventory dialog.  It sounds like you have 8 character barcodes (RG0038L2), and the tapes were first written using the first 6 characters as the media ID (1:2:3:4:5:6), but the current Media ID generation rule has been set to the last 6 (3:4:5:6:7:8). 

If that isn't the problem, then the robot is reporting only the last 6 characters and you will need to change it to use all 8 characters, then use the media ID generation to set them to the correct first characters.

[SteveDown]

The barcodes on the old tapes are the same format as the new barcodes stuck to the tapes I used for testing. It does seem strange that it's unhappy importing the old tapes.

I've created a Media Generation rule with 1:2:3:4:5:6 and assigned it to the robot. I then removed the tapes from inventory and re-ran the robot inventory. At this moment in time it appears to be working. I'll update when I see a change in the log.

[Marianne]

There is a small L2 at the end of the barcode. The new robot reads and report the 6 barcode characters plus the L2 as 8-digit barcode. NBU default is to store last 6 characters of the barcode. You will need to delete the media with L2 at the end, create Media Generation rule as per above excellent post, then run inventory again. When media id's are added with 1st 6 characters, go ahead with import.

[SteveDown]

After creating the new Media Generation rule, deleting the previous tape inventory, and refreshing the inventory with the new rule. The jobs I'm running to import the legacy tapes is now working fine.