Damn! Just when I thought I knew everything! ;)  If this functionality 
works, this is a Beautiful Thing (tm).
Does anyone already have a script that uses cleanstats and complains if the 
cleaning tape is out?

At 05:00 PM 4/6/00 -0600, Rob Worman wrote:
Something that Curtis didn't mention (I bet he wasn't aware of the 
functionality, as it's certainly never made clear in the NetBackup GUI, but 
it's mentioned on p.309 of the Media Manager 3.2 Admin Guide) is the fact 
that NetBackup can control the cleaning tape *no matter which method you 
choose* - time-based or demand-based.

>This is the way to have your cake and eat it too:
>
>    -turn off autoclean on your tape library
>    -insert a cleaning tape into your library and configure a
>     Netbackup volume of type "DLT-CLN"
>    -for each of your DLT drives in this library, set the
>     "Cleaning Frequency" to 0
>    -set up some sort of cronjob (you can use the 
> /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/cleanstats, or write your own based on it) that 
> will periodically check the cleaning tape and raise an alarm when it's 
> about to run out.
>
>voila.  when one of your DLT's needs cleaning, a TapeAlert signal will get 
>sent, NetBackup will clean the drive, and after this happens frequently 
>enough, your cron job will email you that your cleaning tape needs to be 
>replaced.  (note that this implies that you're running NBU 3.2 - I'm not 
>sure if NBU <3.2 supports TapeAlert or not)

---
W. Curtis Preston, Principal Consultant at Collective Technologies
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