barcode media problem

[gina_fle]

For some strange reason Netbackup is interchanging the letters on the new labels on our
new dlt tapes. 

Ex: AB1234 is on the outside of the tape.  Netbackup is showing it as
     A1234B.

A friend its because its probably because Netbackup can only see 6 characters
on the label when it actuality it has 7.

Help!!!

[Stumpr2]

Read up about barcode rules and the vm.cconf file in the Media Manager admin guide. Here is a splurt about it in a technote

Documentation: Does NetBackup support greater than 8 character barcode labels?

http://support.veritas.com/docs/275633

Details:

Manual: NetBackup (tm) 5.0 for UNIX Media Manager System Administrator's Guide

Page: 271

Modification Type: Addition

Modification:

There was an enhancement in version 5.0 that was not in any of the 4.5 releases. In the 5.0 release, the robot will return the full barcode. By using media ID generation rules it is possible to choose the characters from the barcode to create the desired mediaIDs.

The barcode length supported will be dependent upon library types. For additional information, please see the "Robot Attributes" in Appendix A on page 271 of the "Media Manager System Administrator's Guide"  NetBackup 5.0 for UNIX. For example, on Tape Linear Digital type robots "Barcodes can be from 1 to 16 characters in length."

[gina_fle]

Thanks!  Pardon the newbie question but how which part of the barcode is used for the media ID for a seven digit barcode?  Is it the first six typically or starting from the second digit down?

[Stumpr2]

however you want to define it

[gina_fle]

Thanks!

[gina_fle]

After adding the rules in, do I need to restart any of the services?

[Darren_Dunham]

No, but assuming you never actually labeled or used the tape,  you'll probably want to "delete" those tapes with the odd names from the system, then let it find it again with the name you want.

--
Darren

[gina_fle]

Well I can't do that since backups were run on some tapes already.  How do I change the barcode id for tapes already in inventory?  Do I need to restart any process after adding the rules?

[sshagent]

vmchange -barcode BLAHBLAH -m BLAHBLAH

does the trick. 

I changed from the robot side of things to stop it presenting the entire tape label ( with tape type suffix ) btw

[Darren_Dunham]

---

@gina_fle wrote:
Well I can't do that since backups were run on some tapes already.  How do I change the barcode id for tapes already in inventory?  Do I need to restart any process after adding the rules?

---

How much data are you talking?  Yes, changing the barcode in the catalog is pretty easy, but most folks aren't used to dealing with tape that have a name and barcode that are different.  It's easy to be confused.

If the amount of data isn't huge, I recommend suspending all the tapes with the odd barcodes, duplicating the data over to tapes with the correct labels, then expiring the odd tapes and deleting them.  That lets you clean them up without losing data.

If you don't have the bandwith to do this, you'll just have to remember that barcodes and tape labels won't be identical in your environment until those volumes disappear.

--
Darren

[gina_fle]

Thanks Darren.   Is there anyway to change/rename the media id?

[Darren_Dunham]

It's written on the tape itself, so changing it requires writing to the tape (which will erase the data on the tape).  All the images in the catalog are referenced with that media ID.

So no, you can't change the internal (RVSN) media ID on a tape with valid images.  You can change it with 'bplabel' when you can afford to lose all data on the volume.

--
Darren

[gina_fle]

Thanks!

[J_H_Is_gone]

you could get other tapes labeled correclty then dup to that tape then you can expire the old tape and fix its label.

or freeze it until it expires.

the label it.