What is the authoritative way of checking to see if a tape is free?  By free
I mean either (a) never used, or (b) all images on it are recycled.

The "free_tapes" script in the goodies directory simply reports unassigned
tapes that have been mounted less than some arbitrary maximum (e.g., the
"assigned" field from vmquery is "---" and the number of mounts is less than
125).  However, isn't it possible that a tape could be assigned to a pool,
live in the pool for a while, have all its images expire, and thus still be
"assigned" while also being free (i.e., blank for all intents and purposes)?

Also, we're implementing a scratch pool and I'm curious what the mechanism
is for moving a tape from its assigned pool back into scratch.  Let's say
pool A claims tape 123 from scratch, uses it a while, and then eventually
all of the images on the tape expire.  I would like at that point for the
tape to drop back into the scratch pool...is that what happens?

Thanks all,

--
Drew Fabbro (fabbro.andrew AT cnf DOT com)
CNF - USG - 503.450.3374
"Don't try to be like Jackie.  This is only one Jackie.  
Study computers instead." -- Jackie Chan