Hello all,

I'm still relatively new to Tivoli administration, so I'm hoping this problem 
I've come up against turns out to be something someone here has seen before.

A number of months ago (before I joined my current team) my manager made the 
decision to increase the data retention period for our tape library from 3 
months to 6 months.  (I guess this is done at the management class level?)  
This decision was made without considering if we had enough tapes in our 
library to support the move, and is it turned out, we did not!  My tape 
machines are nearly empty, and there are only a small handful of 3590's I can 
put in the machines which do not show up in a "q vol" report ... and all this 
is happening right before our monthly archive backups which are scheduled to 
run this coming Saturday night.  

On to my question...

I need to start freeing up tapes with data older than 5 months.  It seems to me 
that the way to accomplish this is with the "delete volume" command.  However, 
when I execute this command versus a tape, I get the following message:

*****
ANR1425W Scratch volume 000101 is empty but will not be deleted - volume state 
is "mountablenotinlib".           
*****

Here's the volume history for this tape:

*****
Volume Name: 000101
Storage Pool Name: AIXPOOL
Device Class Name: 3590TAPE01
Estimated Capacity (MB): 0.0
Pct Util: 0.0
Volume Status: Empty
Access: Read-Only
Pct. Reclaimable Space: 0.0
Scratch Volume?: Yes
In Error State?: No
Number of Writable Sides: 1
Number of Times Mounted: 1
Write Pass Number: 1
Approx. Date Last Written: 02/23/04 08:46:58
Approx. Date Last Read: 02/23/04 05:13:52
Date Became Pending: 
Number of Write Errors: 0
Number of Read Errors: 0
Volume Location: 
Last Update by (administrator): ADMIN
Last Update Date/Time: 02/23/04 22:20:38
*****

So basically, what I need to do is free up tapes such as the one above so that 
my 3494's will turn them into scratch volumes again.  I couple of things 
confuse me here though.  First, the tape above is already older than 6 months 
(or 180 days, which is what the retention period is set at), so why does it 
still show up on the "q vol" report?   I'm assuming that any tape which shows 
up when you do a "q vol" won't be turned into a scratch volume.  That would 
seem to be confirmed by this output from my "label" command:

*****
ANR8816E LABEL LIBVOLUME: Volume 000101 in library 3494LIB cannot be labelled 
because it is currently defined in a  storage pool or in the volume history 
file.
*****

How do I get this tape out of the volume history file?  I'm assuming this is an 
issue with the volume history file, as opposed to an issue with this tape being 
defined in a storage pool ... but maybe I'm wrong about that.  We have a half 
dozen or so storage pools that our scratch tapes can get assigned to.  

As a side note, I have tapes on my "q vol" report which were written to last in 
2003.  Shouldn't those tapes age off that report if the backup copy group 
variable "Versions Data Exists" is set to 180?  

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I'm about to enter panic mode as I see 
the number of usable tapes in my library dwindle.  

As always, thank you,
Chris Hund
Tivoli/Unix Admin
Fiserv Health