Re: [Networker] change tape media with (R) designation

On Thu, September 24, 2009 12:30, Tim Mooney wrote:

> Yes, but it's likely not going to matter.  NetWorker *will* happily
> recycle tapes that are marked as read-only.  What it won't do is recycle
> tapes that are marked as "manual".
>
> You can try using
>
>       nsrmm -o notreadonly VOLUMENAME
>
> but I don't think that's going to be the magic bullet to get NetWorker to
> start using these.

This makes them read-write, but the recyclable flag is then lost. The
magic incantation seems to be 'nsrjb -LR <vol>':

    -L    Labels  the volumes in the specified slots, or for remotely man-
          aged jukeboxes,  by  specified  tags. [...]

    -R    Recycles  the  volume.  If  a  volume is recyclable, you are not
          prompted for confirmation as to whether or not this  volume  may
          be  overwritten. See nsrmm(1) for a discussion of the per-volume
          flags.

The '-Y' flag could also be useful. At the end of this operation the
volumes have a "appendable" state/flag and are usable in the pool they are
in.

What I don't understand is: all the savesets that have expired, and have a
volume mode / state of 'expired', why is the 'read-only' flag being set?
Looking at the media list, everything that is expired is also read-only.
Is there a setting that I can enable to tell NetWorker to automatically
re-use tapes?

Every so often in the messages log I get a "media info: suggest relabeling
<volume> on <server> for writing  to pool '<pool>'". Sometimes I see NW
trying to relabel it eventually as well.

Can NetWorker just choose the oldest tape that start overwriting it, or is
the manual relabeling thing done on purpose? Do I need to just setup a
cron job to do the relabeling?

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