Not Frozen, Not Ejecting, but Full

[teckert]

I have a situation where tapes are changing from the Scratch volume pool to the NetBackup volume pool.  These tapes are not Frozen and are reporting as being FULL, yet they do not eject with a deferred eject and I cannot change them back to the Scratch volume pool.  I can manually eject them, but then if I move them to the OFFSITE volume group and take them off site, they show up on the picklist the very next day.  I attempted to change out the label on one of them, but the first time it was mounted after the label change, it froze.  When I unfroze it and let it run again, it froze again.

Please let me know what I should do.

Thank you kindly.

[Stumpr2]

..."When I unfroze it and let it run again, it froze again."

Did you check the logs and see why it froze the tape?

[J_H_Is_gone]

by chance are they catalog tapes?

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

FULL means it's full of valid data/backups that you will need to restore from.
You cannot change tapes with valid data on them to Scratch - that will automatically happen once all the backup images on the tapes have expired. If you are in doubt, run 'Images on Media' report to see which client backups are on the tapes.
You can also run 'Media List Report' (Tape List in 6.5) to see amount of images and Kbytes written.

Please explain how you did the following: " I attempted to change out the label on one of them"...
If you physically pull off label A00000 and replace it with label XXXXXX, it still has an internal label of A00000. The moment tape XXXXXX gets mounted, the internal label of A00000 is recognized - NetBackup knows that this tape is full off valid, unexpired images. It will say something like the following in the logs:
'Expected XXXXXX, found A00000. FREEZING media....'
It will not allow the tape to be overwritten until all images have expired.

If you have a problem with your vault configuration and deferred ejects, you should concentrate your efforts on troubleshooting that...

[Stumpr2]

Judy I think you are correct. it is the only situation that seems to fit.

[T_N]

yup I think may be they're catalog tapes, run vmquery -m media_ID check if they're catalog tape or NBU normal tapes, if they're catalog tapes then you should format them.

[J_H_Is_gone]

if they were in the scratch pool and then went to the netbackup pool then they "may" have been used for a catalog backup,  if they were then we need to find out why his catalogs are not being ejected.

so we really need to hear of the user - are they catalog tapes?

[teckert]

(Sorry about the delay in responding.  Yesterday, the site wouldn't let me reply.)

Thank you for the catalog idea.  I'm trying to figure out if it's a catalog tape.  I'm fairly new to Netbackup and I'm not sure how to check this. 

[teckert]

I physically changed the barcode label.  Your explanation of how this works is good for me to know.  Thank you for taking time to explain this.

[teckert]

I can't find the logs from when it originally had a problem, but I did find a couple logs from when it froze.  They read as follows:

• Warning   FREEZING media id xxxxxx, it contains NetBackup database backup data and cannot be used for backups.
• Info            media id xxxxxx removed from media manager database (expired)

Keep in mind that this happened after I changed out the label (barcode).

I have a new tape that is acting the same way, but I cannot find any logs that indicates what is happening.  I'm still working to find information in the logs.  If you have any suggestions on how to find the information I'm looking for, I'd be much obliged.

[Will_Restore]

... means it's a Catalog tape.

Whether you put on a new label or keep the original label, the system will not overwrite this critical data.

[teckert]

Thank you for this info.

Is there a reason it is not ejecting them?

[Will_Restore]

Similar issue discussed in this recent thread:
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/catalog-backup-netbackup-654-writting-one-tape-only-a...

[Stumpr2]

Have you selected to have the catalog tape ejected in the vaulting?

[teckert]

Where can I look to find out if it's set to eject catalog tapes?

[Stumpr2]

Did you create the vaulting portion of netbackup? How much do you know about your vaulting environment?
Sometimes contractors will set up vaulting but not take the time to explain what they did.
Actually it is pretty simple and the GUI helps explain it. You need two things.

1. a vaulting policy (tells when to vault)
This is a policy that shows up in the NetBackup policies part of the GUI

2. a vaulting profile (tells what to vault)
This is at the bottom of the menu items on the left and is labeled "Vault Management"
expand  vault management and click on a vault.
The vault profiles are on the right side of GUI.
Go ahead and open one up
Take a look at them and use the help button

You should be able to gain a lot of knowledge just by looking and using the help button.
If you have further questions then please first look in the vaulting admin guide and secondly come back and feel free to ask.