In regard to: Re: [Networker] change tape media with (R) designation, David...:

On Thu, October 1, 2009 13:04, Tim Mooney wrote:

This makes them read-write, but the recyclable flag is then lost.

Ok, so you now need two steps:

        nsrmm -o notreadonly VOLUMENAME
        nsrmm -o recyclable VOLUMENAME

to answer the original question.

If I run 'notreadonly' and go to nwadmin > Media > Volumes..., it no
longer has the (R), but under the Mode column there's a blank (i.e., not
appendable), and under the Expiration column there's a "-". The save sets
are all "recyclable".

What happens if you manually run

        nsrim

at this point?  Does the mode become recyclable?

I then apply the "recyclable" command, and it goes back to being (R) as
well as "recyc" and "expired". All the savesets also have a status of
"recyclable".

Ah yes, I had forgotten about that.  I ran into that same issue a long
time back, and it confused me.  I actually asked Legato support about it.
It's been a long time so I'm a little sketchy on the details, but I
believe the response was something along the lines of: when you manually
force a volume to be recyclable, it can no longer be appendable so the
tool instead switches it to read only.  It was at this exact point that
I learned that being marked read-only will not prevent NetWorker from
recycling the tape.

All the volumes are listed as "full" under the %Used column in both cases.

That will indeed relabel volumes (and if you use -Y, even volumes that are
not recycleable, so be careful).  I would have to reread the original
question, but I tried to answer the question that was asked, which I think
was "how do you make tapes not readonly".

Sure, though I think my end goal is mostly to have tapes recycled
automatically. I would have thought that this occurred automatically as
stuff expired, but that seems not to be the case for some reason.

It's the "for some reason" part that may be where the explanation lies.
The read-only bit is a red herring, it's not what's causing the issue
you're seeing.

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT 
edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure                  701-231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building                             701-231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164

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