Hi,

Just be sure that even if a single save set on the volume says "Abort" OR "Suspect", it would not get recycled automatically.

Run nsrim -X. This command automatically runs once every 24 hours but only at the end of a scheduled backup and marks media recyc.

Even if you are still doing manually, you can just label them. No need to first mark "recyc" and then Label.

All the save set on the volume says "recyc".

nsrim -X did not help.

I have volumes whose save set are all "recyc" and their expiration date are anywhere from 1 day to 1 week past due.

Any other suggestions?

In Networker, a tape gets recycled only when the pool needs a volume.

When you start a group, it will first check for an appendable mounted tape, If that is not available it checks for appendable tape, further a recycled tape.

So till the time this pool has appendable tapes, Networker would not actually recycle the tape even if it has been marked for recycling.

Have you tried waiting for such a situation or have you been labelling tapes before hand? May be you can give it a try for a less critical group that runs during your availablity. Even if the group is running and does not get the tape, you can label a tape and the group would continue the moment it gets this tape.

I have 5 groups that all uses 1 pool. It sounds like you are saying that as long as there is 1 tape in appendable mode none of the other tapes whose expiration date is past will not change to "expired" and the mode will stay as blank, is that correct???

The procedure I was told to follow is that if a tape whose expiration date is past due and the tape does not go into "expired" statue in the expiration column then I need to manually recycle the tape and then do a label job on it. Is this incorrect?

I don't think so. I have pools with several appendable and expired recyclable tapes in one pool.

Hi, when you tapes hit it's expiration date do they turn into recyc in the expiration column? I would expect to see that under most backup software but I'm not sure how Networker works.

No, they should turn into expired mode but would get recycled when the pool needs an appendable tape. I would just re-check if I have ever seen a blank mode.



This is not incorrect if auto expired does not happen. You need to relabel tapes but you can do this in a single step. Just relabel...changing to recycle first does not add any value to it.

The only other reason I can think of having a "BLANK" not expired status OR needing to do what you do is IF WHILE LABELLING A TAPE YOU SELECT "MANUAL RECYCLE". Is it so? Don't do that.

I made some screenshots but I couldn't figure out how to attach them to this post but below is an example of what I'm seeing.

Barcode Written Used Mode Expiration
000635 0 0 appen
000636 383 GB full recyc expired
000637 358 GB full 1/8/2008
000638 331 GB 100% appen 1/9/2008

Tape 000635 I had manually label.
Tape 000636 I had manually changed the mode to "recyclable".
Tape 000637 and 000638 I had not done anything to them.

I would expect to see both tapes 000637 and 000638 change it's expiration column from "1/8/2008" and "1/9/2008" to "expired", unless my understanding of the software is incorrect.



I do not select the "manual recycle" checkbox when I do the label.

Do you get the same output on mminfo commands?

Did you think of upgrading NW to 7.3.3?

I'm a newbie with no training so I'm not familiar with the mminfo command. Can you tell me what to look for? I type mminfo and it spit out what looks like a catalog listing of the tape volumes.

Upgrading from our current version is not an option because of a 3rd party vendor who will not support beyond our current version.