bplabel error

[Bruce_Clegg]

I just unboxed some new tapes and added them to the robot.  The rules that assign the media id when the tape is first inventoried are pretty general.  I want to be more specific.  Before I back anything up onto the new tape I want to manually set the media id.

The barcode of the new tape is 000058 and that is also the new media id.  I want to change the media id to C00058.  I assigned the tape to the proper volume pool - then went to the command line and typed in:

sudo ./bplabel -m 000058 -d hcart -o C00058

I get the error:

Error reported by media operation: resource request failed

What am I doing wrong?  Is there a better way than bplabel to accomplish this?

[Will_Restore]

Use this syntax, after mounting the tape in a drive

bplabel -m MEDIA_ID -d DENSITY -o -p POOL_NAME -n DRIVE_NAME

[Bruce_Clegg]

Thanks for the quick reply - so is the pool_name and the drive_name required?  Will it then prompt me for the new media ID?

[Marianne]

Why not order labels with C prefix? How will anyone needing to restore from C00058 after you have left that they need to locate 000058 instead? You can let NBU automatically replace the 1st character with C using Media Id Generation rule. But I think the media-id should be left to match the barcode. I have personally seen the confusion that was caused at my previous company when the person who 1st installed and configured NBU did something similar.

[Bruce_Clegg]

I'm fine with leaving the media id and the barcode id the same - which is what our rules do.  But my predessessor had it set up so that the media id on cumulative tapes are prefaced with C and Full backup tapes are prefaced with F and Archive are prefaced with AR - and the database backups have media id's that start with DB.

I don't really need to continue the tradition I suppose - My predessessor obviously went in and changed every tape - how did he do it?

[sdo · Accepted solution]

Bruce - this forcing of media media labels to match content is soooooo not what NetBackup is about.  NetBackup "Enterprise" is about auto-managing the abstraction between carrier, device, transport and content. Life will be so much easier to just let NetBackup use media whose ID and barcode and label all match.  Just my 2 cents.

[Marianne]

If we really try hard enough we will probably be able to figure it out. It may be something like making a note of the slot number, then deleting 000xxx media-id, followed by vmadd -m C00xxx -barcode 000xxx -p ( pool-number ) and then Inventory the robot. Check if media-id in slot number have been updated. But honestly, I don't see the point. A whole of manual labour to accomplish very little. Maybe your predecessor liked to appear busy and tried to impress others with how much he was doing. I still don't know how you would locate media-id C00xxx from offsite location. It is not even necessary to have separate pools for Full, Cumulative, etc pools as NBU does not mix retention levels. NBU does a good job of managing media. It knows Image id client1_###### is written on media-id 000xxx and will prompt for it when needed for restore.

[Bruce_Clegg]

fair enough.  Thanks for your help/advice.

[sdo]

Good luck with the conversion to what should be smoother operational procedures   :)    Fingers crossed for you.