On 6/24/10 3:02 PM, George Sinclair wrote:

Francis Swasey wrote:

On 6/24/10 12:41 PM, George Sinclair wrote:

I know there's been a lot of discussion over having NW clean versus
having the tape library do the cleaning. I realize that not all
methods work best for everyone, but I have a fundamental technical
question:

If you do have the tape library do the cleaning, will most tape

libraries wait until the drive is empty?

I have a tape library that will only clean drives in physical mode, and
since I run it in logical mode, I would have to shut NW down to let the
library clean the tape drives -- it's a Qualstar XLS 8000 series, in
case you are wondering.

What do you mean by physical mode versus logical mode?

Therefore, I have configured the library to send me an email when a
drive needs to be cleaned and I go check the box in NMC to tell
NetWorker to clean the drive...

I might be able to do that on ours - it's a Dell ML6000, but mimics an ADIC Scalar i500 - but that won't help me if I'm out of town.

I'd like to have NW do the cleaning. I do have a cleaning slot set aside in NW, and NW lists the cleaning tape in that slot and reports the number of uses left, but even though the 'Cleaning required' check box for a given drive does get turned on when a drive needs cleaning, it never loads the cleaning tape. I end up doing it manually from the library and then manually decrementing the 'Uses left' count. Also, I do have the cleaning even notifications in NW set to e-mail me, but I never receive any messages. I do get savegrp notifications, however, and the e-mail is the same.

I do have 'Auto clean' turned on for the jukebox, but I also have the 'Cleaning interval' set to '6 months', and 'Date last cleaned' shows Jan 27, 2010, so obviously it won't clean until July 27 or so, but I thought it would still clean before then, assuming that it detected that the drive needed cleaning. We do have CDI set to 'SCSCI commands' under the Properties for the drives. Every time that the library indicates that a cleaning is required (amber light on GUI), NW checks the 'Cleaning required' box for that drive, so I know NW is picking this up.

Do I need to make the 'Cleaning interval' blank in order to get NW to act on it?

I do not think blank is a legal value for the cleaning interval.

I'd really prefer not to have NW just clean at preset intervals, but I thought I had to have a value in the 'Cleaning interval' if 'Auto clean' was turned on?

I've forgotten, what version of NW are you working with?

--
Frank Swasey                    | http://www.uvm.edu/~fcs
Sr Systems Administrator        | Always remember: You are UNIQUE,
University of Vermont           |    just like everyone else.
  "I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

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