LTO4 Standalone drive restores

[Slartybardfast]

Good Morning everyone,

I have hit an interesting problem. A bit of background first. We moved from a Quantum i6K with LTO5 drives to i3 with LTO7 drives. At the time with much protest from myself to the architects who deemed it will be fine to install a standalone LTO4 drive (No barcode reader) connected to one of the media servers. Now this discision has now bitten us on the proverbial. All old tapes prior to the decommission of old robot were moved to standalone. Now when I am trying to restore data from the old LTO4 tapes I have hit this error when trying to run the following command:

Barcode conflict detected: Media in slot -1 is non-barcoded. There is another media <MEDIAID>  with barcode <MEDIAID> in the EMM database.

Clearly there is a reference that has it down as a member of a robotic library.

When I run vmquery -m <MEDIAID>

the robot type: NONE - Not robotic (0)

Can one of the gurus here shed some light on this. I am probably approaching this from the wrong angle.

Kind regards

[Marianne]

Please check output of vmoprcmd -d.

This will show 'internal' volume label, which should be the same as the media-id. 

[Slartybardfast]

Hi Marianne

Thanks for your quick responce the RecMID has the media label of the tape and the ExtMID is blank!!!

Kind Regards

[Marianne]

Is the tape loaded in the tape drive?
With the 'Ready' light on?

Can you confirm that this is indeed an LTO4 tape and not perhaps LTO5 tape?

[mph999]

ExtMID will be blank for a standalone drive, that's normal (as there is no barcode reader to read the 'Ext'ernal barcode.

There shouldn't be any issue with haveing a standalone drve for the old tapes - apart from the fact that NBU has never been very friendly with standalone drives, so it's awkard at best.

You went from LTO5 -> 7, LTO7 can read LTO5 so better would be to dedicate a single drive in your newlibrary, make this a different density (eg, hcart3) and then put the LTO5 tapes into the library and make these the same density as the single drive (hcart3).  That way, you have one drive that can load the hcart3 tapes (for your restores) and your main backups use all the other drives/ tapes at the other density.

Anyway ...

Barcode conflict detected: Media in slot -1 is non-barcoded. There is another media <MEDIAID>  with barcode <MEDIAID> in the EMM database.

... is nothing to do with the fact that NBU thinks the tape is still 'robotic' - as you have shown yourself 

When I run vmquery -m <MEDIAID>

the robot type: NONE - Not robotic (0)

(or I should say I'm 99.9999999999999999999% sure it's not ....  (just in case one of these days I'm wrong ...)

More there seems to be some sort of clash -  suggest listing out a list of all the mediaIDs and barcodes 

bmquary -a -l    is one way ....

Are there any instances where the media id's are the same ?  This shouldn't be possible, but that's what it appears to be complaining about ... )

[Marianne]

@Slartybardfast 

Can you tell us what steps you took when you saw this error message? 

Barcode conflict detected: Media in slot -1 is non-barcoded. There is another media <MEDIAID>  with barcode <MEDIAID> in the EMM database.

Have you perhaps tried to run 'physical inventory' on the tape drive? (Tape inserted in the drive and 'Ready' light on.)

Extract from 'Command Ref Guide' :
vmphyinv – inventory media contents of a robotic library or standalone drive and update the volume database

vmphyinv {-u drive_number | -n drive_name} [-h device_host]
[-non_interactive] [-mount_timeout timeout] [-verbose]

[Slartybardfast]

Hi Marianne,

I ran the following command vmphyiinv -u 0 -h <servername> -verbose which echo'd back "Barcode conflict detected: Media in slot -1 is non-barcoded. There is another media <MEDIAID>  with barcode <MEDIAID> in the EMM database" in the command terminal. I am having remote hands check the tape to make sure it is not an LTO5 tape.

Kind Regards

[Slartybardfast]

Hi Forum,

I know this is a really old thread to resurrect but I finally got a restore to work using a standalone drive. The key points as point out by Marianne and mph999 is to make sure that from a command line on the media server is that you can see the drive. "tpconfig -l" and "vmoprcmd -d" commands are very helpful. Being standalone the "ExtMID" will be blank as it has no external bar code reader but the "RecID" should be read from the tape.  From these commands you will be able to find the Drive Index number. Once you have that then you can use "vmphyinv -u <DriveIndexNumber> -h <mediaserver>

If you get an error that "no drive can be found" then NetBackup is not aware of the drive. It took a power cycle of the drive and reboot of media server. The drive then appeared in the "Drives" tab in "Activity Monitor"

In my case I was returned an error by this command "Barcode conflict detected: Media in slot -1 is non-barcoded. There is another media MediaID with barcode MediaID in the EMM database."

Next I checked that the media was "robot type = none" by using vmquery -m <MEDIAID>

I kicked of a restore and looked at the "Details Status" I saw this:

"13-May-2021 12:10:59 - awaiting resource <MediaID>. Waiting for resources. 
          Reason: Media is in use, Media server: N/A, 
          Robot Type(Number): NONE(0), Media ID: <MediaID>, Drive Name: N/A, 
          Volume Pool: N/A, Storage Unit: N/A, Drive Scan Host: N/A, 
          Disk Pool: N/A, Disk Volume: N/A"

I went to lunch and when I  returned  the "Detail Status" had progressed to

13-May-2021 12:39:38 - Info bptm (pid=7624) Waiting for mount of media id <MediaID> (copy 2) on server <MediaServer>.
13-May-2021 12:39:38 - started process bptm (pid=7624)
13-May-2021 12:39:38 - mounting <MediaID>
13-May-2021 12:39:38 - granted resource  <MediaID>
13-May-2021 12:39:38 - granted resource  QUANTUM.ULTRIUM-HH4.000
13-May-2021 12:39:39 - Info bptm (pid=7624) INF - Waiting for mount of media id <MediaID> on server <MediaServer> for reading.
13-May-2021 12:39:41 - mounted <MediaID>; mount time: 0:00:03
13-May-2021 12:39:41 - Info bptm (pid=7624) <MediaID>
13-May-2021 12:39:42 - Info bptm (pid=7624) INF - Waiting for positioning of media id <MediaID> on server <MediaServer> for reading.
13-May-2021 12:39:42 - positioning <MediaID> to file 9
13-May-2021 12:40:58 - positioned <MediaID>; position time: 0:01:16
13-May-2021 12:40:58 - begin reading

And finally the restore completed successfully. I hope this help someone that has a silly configuration such as ours where they only purchased a standalone drive after replacing the robot with updated kit.