Unmountable media

[Barry_Dean]

I have Netbackup Enterprise Server 5.1
Sun V440 Server, Solaris 8, QLogic QLA2340 fibre card
Overland NEO 2000 library with FCO card
2x HP Ultrium 2 drives.
Some labels of the form AWGxxxL1

Trying to perform a backup, NetBackup (tldd) works it's way along the library trying and rejecting each tape in each drive. The error is that the tape is Unmountable. I can see the tape in the drive, then about 10 minutes after it is put there, a timeout occurs and the tape is rejected. There is one tape that has no label (there are others), this one tape worked and I backed up the whole server onto it, but it is rejected when I try a test restore.

I have searched Google and Veritas with each of the errors from /var/adm/messages and bptm log but have found nothing.

Clues please! Where do I go next.

Have tried changing settings in st.con, recreating /dev/rmt entries, mounted a tape manually using robtest and performed a server backup with ufsdump which worked.

I have found articles that suggest this may be related to:
The tape labels.
The licence for the library based drives.
The media (They are LTO2 tapes and LTO2 drivers), media all brand new.

[trickykid]

These tapes aren't set to be unwritable are they? Check the tapes to make sure they aren't switched to safe and are actually writeable.

If they are and it still spits them back out, could be something written to the tapes from previous backups, like catalog's. If that's the case, you'll want to take manual control of the robot and move each tape into an available drive, then perform a dd to wipe the beginning of the tapes to make sure they are totally blank.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/st/ bs=1024 count=1024

[Barry_Dean]

Turns out that drive index 0 was configured for /dev/rmt/0cbn in tpconfig and drive index 1 was /dev/rmt/1cbn, this was the wrong way round.

Reversing these mappings fixed the problem.

NetBackup was interting a tape into drive index 0 then looking at /dev/rmt/0cbn for the drive to come ready, is could not 'cos the tape was in /dev/rmt/1cbn!!!

After a timeout, the drive was downed, then NetBackup figured the drive was OK and Up'ed the drive and froze the media!

Much playing with robtest revealed this to me! How I ever got a backup on the one tape I did is a mystery,I may have forced a tape in the other drive, and when netbackup gave up on the first drive, it tried the second and lo-and-behold there was the tape it was waiting for!

I am now going to go and drink lots of beer or wine :)