On Thu, Jul 29, 2004 at 07:21:04PM -0400, George Sinclair wrote:
> If I what I said is correct, then it appears that Legato's cleaning
> scheme is based entirely on its own schedule and has nothing to do with
> the library and/or what the device on the library thinks. Now, perhaps
> this all changes in later releases of NetWorker? Can anyone whose using
> 6.1.4 or later confirm this?
>
> If this is the case for our version then it sounds dangerous as there's
> no friggin' way I'm gonna leave the drive cleaning schedule to guess
> work. LOL! I'd rather let the library do it, where I know it will get
> done when and only when it needs it even if it means runnning the risk
> of contention.
>
> It woul be nice if NetWorker based its decision to clean or not clean
> based on what the library device tells it and not it's own guess work
> schedule and worse case scenario being that NetWorker would notify you
> that the drive needed to be cleaned but would leave it up to the device
> to determine this.

You can choose which plan you would like.  Cleaning tapes was one of the
only issues we had upgrading from 6.0.2 to 7.1.2.  Somewhere inbetween
those versions, they changed something.

Our scheme cleans the DLT7k drives once every two weeks, and ignores the
drive cleaning light.  We have a lot of older tapes in the rotation that
often can trigger the cleaning required light, which doesn't always stay
on after the tape is out and the drive is empty.  (I was told once that
if the cleaning light is on when a tape is in the drive, the tape is
dirty.  If the light stays on when the tape is out of the drive, the
drive needs cleaning.  I don't know if this is valid or not.)

After the upgrade, Networker started to pay attention to what the
cleaning light said, and started cleaning our drives after every tape
load.  It was ignoring the schedule, and cleaning when the drive light
was on.  It would clean the drive, put a tape in, notice the light
turned on, and then clean the drive again.  I know this thread has been
singing the praises of autocleaning, but it can work against you when a
drive is cleaned 4-5 times a day, especially when it doesn't really need
it.

Under the devices config in nwadmin there was an CDI option.  If I set
it to SCSI commands, the cleaning obeyed the cleaning light.  If I set
it to not used, it obeys the schedule.

Dave

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