Hello Andrew

By default, Netbackup will not overwrite a tape with tar data and no Netbackup
header on it which is what the Catalog backup tapes are.   Simply bplabel the
tapes with the bplabel command and you're ready to go.   The bplabel command
will write a Netbackup header onto the tape.   Alternatively, you could mount
the tape and use the Unix command mt to erase the tape and let Netbackup simply
label the tape on the next time it mounts but depending on the tape drive, the
"mt -f erase" process may take hours.

The flags that I use with bplabel are: "bplabel -ev ${TAPE} -d 8mm -o -p Hold"

Note in my case, I must first change the tape into the pool "Hold" before the
command will work (kinda a nice safety feature).   Could it be that you haven't
changed the pool of your Netbackup tapes to pool Test before issuing your
command?   I believe that by default, catalog tapes would be in pool Netbackup
so perhaps you need to either first change the volume's pool or issue the
bplabel command without the "-p poolname" flag since bplabel defaults to pool
Netbackup.

Works fine for me.

Regards,
John I Wang
Sr. Systems Engineer
Steverson Information Professionals

---
Enron Networks
Enron Building room 3427e
ph (713) 345-4888
cell (832) 493-1263
fax (713) 646-8462
pg pagejwang AT skytel DOT com or 1-877-390-4155





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|        |          AndrewTaylor2@hal|
|        |          ifax.co.uk       |
|        |                           |
|        |          07/20/01 04:14 AM|
|        |                           |
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  |                                                                    |
  |       To:     veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu                    |
  |       cc:     (bcc: John Wang/Contractor/Enron Communications)     |
  |       Subject:     [Veritas-bu] (no subject)                       |
  >--------------------------------------------------------------------|



Folks,

A question regarding cycling expired database backup tapes for use as
scratch/data tapes. For reasons too long to explain, we were advised to
clear these tapes down by running a standalone 'tar' command over the tapes,
the understanding being that next time these tapes were mounted, bplabel
would automatically kick in and allow the media to be overwritten. Wrong -
we get media write errors whenever we try to backup and duplicate to these
tapes.

So, we've a collection of these tapes to get back into the cycle and I've
tried the command:

bplabel -ev MediaID -d hcart -p Test -o

and get back:

bplabel: error occurred writing label, No such file or directory
(if -o is not in place we also get informed that 'Media is already NetBackup
format....')

The media has been successfully deassigned through volmgr and bpexpdate'd,
and I've tried both pre-mounting the tape in library or trying to let the
robot mount it without luck.

Anyone have any ideas? Base config info below:

Master/media servers: All NT4 SP6a and use SSO
Library: STK L700 with fibre 9840 drives
NetBackup version: 3.4.0 J0850482
bpvault: 3.4

Thanks,

Andrew Taylor
Halifax plc.


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