On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 01:14:15PM -0400, George Sinclair wrote:
> 03/10/09 10:17:09 nsrd: media info: About to start checking label
> 03/10/09 10:17:09 nsrd: media info: Not a valid networker label
> 03/10/09 10:17:09 nsrd: media info: expected volume 'vol1' got '-'.
> 03/10/09 10:17:10 nsrd: media info: Label check failed, marking savesets 
> suspect and volume vol1 full.
>  [...]
> My question, and it might seem silly, is would upgrading the firmware 
> really resolve an issue like this? Would a newer version of the firmware 
>  somehow try harder to read a label? Has anyone seen firmware issues 
> that caused this mischief?

The label is just data that happens to be at the beginning of the tape.
So from my point of view there's only a couple of things that can be
happening.  Either Networker is doing something wrong and reading or
interpreting the data from the tape incorrectly or the tape drive
(drivers, OS, etc..) are returning bad data to the app.  

If it's the latter, I'd be worried about data integrity more than the
annoyances of having the data marked suspect and marking the volume
full.  It's possible that bad firmware could do anything.  Maybe after a
rewind it claims the drive is ready before it really is and causes
Networker's check to screw up.  That could be fixed by new firmware.

I'm assuming you can run nsrim -p or nsrjb -p on any of these tapes and
always see the correct label?  

If I've got a problem and my vendor is recommending a firmware upgrade,
I'd probably go along with it just to advance things.  Otherwise if I'm
troubleshooting they're going to think in the back of their minds that
it's the firmware and I'm stupid for not upgrading...

-- 
Darren

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