Hi Bob,
vmphyinv is not magic. It was created to be able to make an inventory (physical inventory) for thos libraries which do not have a barcode reader.
There is no reason why vmphyinv would act differently than another inventory : if the media in a given slot has been added to the volume database under a specific mediaID, then this mediaID will NOT be changed in anyway. You can not modify that part of the volume database.
That's why you had to delete yourself the media from the base. You do not want vmphyinv to delete a media from the base if your library became crazy and accidentaly moved a tape to a different slot, do you ?
Then, when the vmphyinv made an inventory of the media in your given slot, it decided to read its WRITTEN mediaID, means the LABEL.
- if the media was new, there was no label ... vmphyinv couldn't do anything.
- if the media had already been used, there was a label : original one, 00001L2, so it gave back the volume name associated to the tape in the slot.
I dont know if vmphyinv gave u a wrong message. What i can say is :
- no use to restart netbackup after modifying vm.conf, because it's a configuration file of MediaManager, not of NetBackup, and it's read each time you make an inventory
- you MUST create this vm.conf rule on each of your media servers. (this is very true under windows : you'll see that if you use a deported admonistration console, it has it's own vm.conf, and would not use the media server local vm.conf and rules)
- don't use vmphyinv if you want to re-read te barcode of a tape - vmphyinv reads the LABEL on the tape, not the barcode
- once a tape has been named, you can not change its mediaID - only thing you can do is changing the its associated barcode .... reason why you had to delete the media from the base before having another inventory made (vmupdate or GUI)
- instead of creating media_id_barcode rules, you can configure your library for SHORT_LABEL. Most have this option, and would not give the L1, L2, D1, D2 associated with SDLT and LTO tapes.
Hope this helps.Message was edited by:
Laurent Dongradi