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Netbackup Tape Drive Issues

Seonix
Level 3

Hi all,

I posted a thread some time ago with this exact same issue (https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/netbackuptape-robot-issues) involving the tape drive in our robot constantly reporting that it's not ready and jobs failing because they reach the end of their start window.

The Windows system logs report errors regarding "questionable barcodes" for many, if not all of the slots. It was resolved last time by doing an nbrbutil -resetall but there does not appear to be any orphaned MDS allocations this time around.

I have already:

- Rebooted the robot

- Run nbrbutil -resetall

- Run robtest (all slots return sense code 0x83)

- Run the netbackup drive diagnostics (these fail at the first step)

I'm really at my wits end with this and am hoping someone can provide any further guidance. Happy to post outputs from any relevant commands.

Seonix

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Accepted Solutions

Seonix
Level 3

OK. I installed the IBM diagnostic tools to see if that came back with anything.

Apparently the drive need cleaning and didn't let any tapes be mounted until it was cleaned :|

Thanks all.

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5 REPLIES 5

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

"questionable barcodes"  and "drives in use" are actually 2 separate issues.

Barcode issue is possibly caused by one of two things:

1) Real issue with barcodes (e.g. 'homemade' labels)
2) Problem with barcode reader

The "questionable barcodes"  message is coming from the robot itself. 

Troubleshooting will be physical inspection of the labels on the tapes, followed by support call to your hardware support team.
The '
sense code 0x83' says to me that the problem is probably with barcode reader.


 

Seonix
Level 3

Hi Marianne,

To be more specific, the problem is that backups fail with "no drives are available" as the last entry in the job log (error 196).

The questionable barcodes errors appear in the windows system event logs. I'm not sure if they are actually related to our issue.

We have never used barcodes on the tapes before.

Any other ideas before I go calling the tape drive manufacturer?

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Are all drives 'UP' when "no drives are available" is seen?

Please ensure that you have VERBOSE entry in vm.conf (....\veritas\volmgr).
If not, please add entry and restart NBU Device Manager service.
This will ensure that all Media Manager activities and errors are logged to Event Viewer System and Application log.

You definitely need to log a hardware call for the "questionable barcodes" issue.
 

Jim_Horalek
Level 4
Partner Accredited Certified

You don't say what kind of tape drive your using or who the manufacture is. IBM or HP? ! LTO? LTO-5? Nor have you told us if you have tried a different tape media manufacture.

Make sure your tape drives have the latest firmware.

Seonix
Level 3

OK. I installed the IBM diagnostic tools to see if that came back with anything.

Apparently the drive need cleaning and didn't let any tapes be mounted until it was cleaned :|

Thanks all.