John,

Why don't you flag the volumes as "manual"? That way they will be set to
"Manually Recyclable" and there will not be recycled automatically.

Greg




| Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 11:06:40 -0400
| From: John Seyller <seyller AT CLEMSON DOT EDU>
| Subject: [Networker] Write protected tapes
| To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
|
| Hopefully someone has found a work around to this long standing
| networker problem.  We run Solstice Backup 5.5.4 on Sun E4000 with an
| attached Sun L3500 (ATL7100) and L700 (STK L700) libraries both with
| DLT7000 tape drives.  When we remove tapes from the libraries we write
| protect the tapes with the write protect tab.  The reason for this is to
| prevent writing on the tape if we later need to recover data from an
| atached stand alone DLT7000 drive.  The stand alone drive is used for stand
| alone backups each day with ufsdump.  If a tape is placed in the drive for
| a recover and accidently left in the drive when cron starts ufsdump it
| could get overwritten unless it is write protected.
|
|         Occasionally tapes will be deposited into the libraries and still
| be manually write protected.  We mark the tapes as recyclable and networker
| re-labels them when needed.  If networker tries to label a tape which is
| manually write protected it will report an error and continue to try until
| the tape is marked not recyclable.  This usually happens in the middle of
| the night and the group fills up all available tapes and waits until the
| problem is corrected.  It would be nice if networker could be configured to
| only try to label a write protected tape a certain number of times.  The
| best fix is to make sure that all tapes placed in a library have manual
| write protect set to off.  Unfortunately, a few mistakes always slip
| through the crack.  Does anyone know of a command which can be issued to
| determine if a tape is manually write protected.  The mt status command
| will tell, but only if you try a write operation.  If the tape was not
| write protected then a file mark or whatever would get written and probably
| destroy the volume information on the tape.
|
|         The lcd screen on the L3500 will indicate a write protected tape if
| it is mounted in the drive,  but I know no way of issuing a status command
| to get the information.  Am I missing some simple solution to this
| problem?  Has anyone else been bitten by this and solved the problem?
| Thanks in advance for your help.
|
| Regards,
| John Seyller
| Clemson University
|
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