What expires images and releases tapes

[J_H_Is_gone]

AIX 7.0.1

I have some tapes that expiration date for the images was this morning.

I know image cleanup has run, but the tapes still have an assigned date, with an expiration date of this morning.

So what runs that expires the images?  ( what can I do a cli to make it run and expire any images that are past due?)

[Andy_Welburn · Accepted solution]

bpexpdate -deassignempty

Should be run automatically per the image cleanup interval. Is it just that all the images have expired but the image cleanup has yet to run or is it just not running at all?

If you do have an issue maybe this is relevant?

The bpexpdate -deassignempty command is not being run automatically by the scheduler, and empty tapes, which hold no valid images, are not being made available for backups
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH135182

[J_H_Is_gone]

Image cleanup was running. In fact I took it form 12 hours to 8 hours and it kicked of right away but did not expire the images.

I looked at the tech doc, and that deassign_lock file was NOT on disk.

I ran the command and it did come back with the tapes that needed to have the images expired.

I will watch and see if it happens again tomorrow.

[Andy_Welburn]

Altho' generally linked to image cleanup it actually runs on its own schedule (independently - see below) of 12 hours.

Media are not being deassigned and returned to scratch
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH135978&

How to change the bpexpdate deassignempty interval
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH63221

(Post editted)

[J_H_Is_gone]

I still have setup set to 8 hours.

I put in tapes today that should have expired all the images some of the at 7:34 pm yesterday, yet the tape has not yet cleared up.

I ran the deassignempty and it comes up with all these tapes that should be expired.

I am going to refrain from cleaning the up until 4:30 pm to see if it does it on its own.

[Andy_Welburn]

i.e. about bpexpdate having its own 12 hour default timescale independent of the image cleanup setting & how it won't run on image cleanup if that's within it's time period?

(contrary to what I initially posted as I believed it was tied directly into image cleanup)

[J_H_Is_gone]

that is why I had changed it to 8 hours to get it kick of a clean up yesterday but it did not run the bpexpdate.

So I did that by hand.

That is also why I am going to wait till 4:30 pm today and see if it kicks off befor then and expires the images to empty my tapes.