The block size does depend on the device and is maintained by the tape.
When your format/re-label a tape it is formatted with whatever block
size you have configured for the device. If in July you re-labeled a
tape and your device was configured for a block size of 64KB but you
decided to change the block size to 128KB in August then you would
encounter the error you mentioned in your post. 

Only change the block size on your tape device if you need to do a
recovery from the tape with the smaller block size otherwise do a label
no mount and it will be formatted with the "current" block size which
seems to be 64KB. 


Thanks,

Dana

-----Original Message-----
From: Legato NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU]
On Behalf Of Nico De Ranter
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 9:12 AM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: Not all tapes are fully used

That's what I meant. If Networker somehow decided the tape isn't worth
writing it should flag it as bad (and of course move on to the next
tape) so the next time it won't be reused either.

Unfortunately I cannot find anything in the logs that would indicate why
it's giving up on the tape. However the following message keeps popping
up every once in a while (but NOT for all tapes that have only been
partialy used):

daemon.001:08/10/06 13:13:06 nsrd: media notice: Volume "4640" on device
"/dev/rmt/5hbn": Block size is 32768 bytes not 65536 bytes. Verify the
device configuration. Tape positioning by record is disabled.

Shouldn't the block size depend on the device, not the tape? In that
case why doesn't he complain about this for *every* tape?

Can I safely change the block size settings without invalidating all my
existing tapes (the manual seems to suggest that's not possible)

Nico

On Wed, 2006-08-16 at 13:25 +0100, Stuart Whitby wrote:
> Why would you mark a tape bad and then keep writing to it?  The whole
point of it being marked "bad" would be that you can't trust it to
retain data.  
>  
> The main problem that I see with this is that while NetWorker marks
savesets as suspect and the volume as full, it doesn't flag the volume
itself.  In time, it will relabel that volume and use it again.  I'd
personally like to see those volumes marked as read-only instead of
being reused.
>  
> Cheers,
>  
> Stuart.
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: Legato NetWorker discussion on behalf of Nico De Ranter
> Sent: Wed 16-Aug-06 12:41
> To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
> Subject: Re: [Networker] Not all tapes are fully used
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2006-08-16 at 08:48 +0100, Wood, R A (Bob) wrote:
> > Nico,
> >
> > Networker will flag a tape as full if it has a write error on that
tape.
> > It doesn't matter what caused the write error (physically reached 
> > end of tape, dirty drive, lumpy power supply, SCSI resets, etc.) 
> > Networker's response is to mark the tape as Full and move on.
> 
> That's what I was afraid of. However somehow I would have expected 
> Networker to flag the tape as bad in stead of just moving on to the 
> next tape. I've got 1 tape device which sometimes writes at a very low

> speed, I'm keeping an eye on it.  Of course since the moment I decided

> to keep an eye on that drive it works perfectly at full speed. It 
> knows, I'm sure it knows...
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Nico

> 
--
Nico De Ranter
Senior System Administrator
Sony Service Center (NSCE)
The Corporate Village, Da Vincilaan 7-D1
B-1935 Zaventem, Belgium
Telephone: +32 (0)2 700 86 41 Fax: +32 (0)2 700 86 22

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