I think anyone interested in this thread should check out Veritas TechNote
ID:237779 which talks about a media's "Status" being set to "0x1" for
NetBackup media and "0x0" for regular media.  Changing this status from
"0x1" to "0x0" will allow bplabel to rewrite the header on these tapes.

To summarize the TechNote:

1)      Use vmquery to see the Status of a tape
2)      Use vmquery -deassignbyid <media_id> <pool_number> <status> to
change status
3)      Use bplabel as normal

For more detailed information, see the TechNote.

http://seer.support.veritas.com/srchengine/sth.dll?Tag&Path=seer%2Esupport%2
Everitas%2Ecom%2Fdocs%2F237779%2Ehtm&CiRestriction=bplabel

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John_Wang AT enron DOT net [SMTP:John_Wang AT enron DOT net]
> Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 8:48 AM
> To:   AndrewTaylor2 AT halifax.co DOT uk
> Cc:   veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject:      Re: [Veritas-bu] (no subject)
> 
> 
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> |--------+--------------------------->
> |        |          AndrewTaylor2@hal|
> |        |          ifax.co.uk       |
> |        |                           |
> |        |          07/20/01 04:14 AM|
> |        |                           |
> |--------+--------------------------->
>   >--------------------------------------------------------------------|
>   |                                                                    |
>   |       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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