I just had this same problem and did some research.

>From http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/208420.htm:

"Sometimes the image database and the media manager database can be out of
sync, and the tape may show as still assigned, or if the tape has a
NetBackup database backup on it, there would be no image entry to begin
with.  When a tape shows an assigned date, but no images are related to that
tape, it will show up in the available_media report as dbbackup.  To tell if
a tape actually has a dbbackup on it, the command:
     vmquery -m mediaid
will show a status, where 0x0 means normal backups, 0x1 means NetBackup
database backup and 0x2 means Storage Migrator.
If it is 0x1, be certain this is not a database backup which will ever be
needed.
If it is 0x2, it is in use by Storage Migrator and understanding of the use
of the tape by Storage Migrator (not covered here) is required.

To free up the tape, when it has an assigned date but no images in the
database, the command:
    vmquery -deassignbyid <mediaid> <poolnumber> <status>
must be run, but the status will be displayed as 0x0, 0x1 or 0x2 and needs
to be just 0, 1 or 2 in the vmquery -deassignbyid."

I recently rewrote the available_media script because I had a bunch of tapes
like you have and they were being reported as DBBACKUP.  My version of the
script reports these as EMPTY, and prints the command that you would use to
return them to AVAILABLE.  (It also runs about 250 to 300 times faster than
Veritas' version.)  Let me know if you would like to try out my version of
available_media and I'll email it to you.

Hope that helps.

Jeffrey Pyne
UNIX Systems Administrator
WorldatWork
14040 N. Northsight Blvd. 
Scottsdale, AZ  85260-3601

On Friday, November 15, 2002 9:57 AM Weber, Philip wrote:

> So if vmquery shows the media has been assigned, mounted, when it was
> mounted etc. I would expect it to be in bpmedialist ...
> 
> Or maybe it wouldn't, if all it's images had expired.  But it's not
> available for backups as I'm getting messages that the robot 
> has no media
> available to allocate.  Should it automatically get assigned 
> back to Scratch
> pool?
> 
> I can't change the pool manually "cannot change volume pool 
> for assigned
> volume (91)"
> 
> Phil Weber
> IT Infrastructure Unix Systems Engineer
> 
> Phone: 01384 26 4136
> Mobile: n/a
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > Not positive, but I'm pretty sure that bpmedialist only list 
> > media that has
> > been assigned to a media server.  If the media has expired, 
> > or is new, it
> > will be unnassigned.  Vmquery sees it as a valid media.  But 
> > bpmedialist
> > will not because it is not currently assigned to a media server.
> > 
> > 
> > Ebon Nash
> > Compuware Corporation
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Weber, Philip [mailto:Philip.Weber AT egg DOT com]
> > Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 10:32 AM
> > To: 'veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu'
> > Subject: [Veritas-bu] Tape MM volume DB / NB media DB mismatch
> > 
> > 
> > Help! I'm getting confused here between what entries should 
> be in what
> > databases for our tapes.
> > 
> > Tape <media> is in our L700.
> > vmquery -M <master> -m <media> shows the tape.
> > bpmedialist -ev <media> reports "requested media id was not 
> > found in NB
> > media database and/or MM volume database" for each media server.
> > 
> > Does this mean I've got a problem - there seems to be a 
> > mismatch here.  It
> > seems to me that this means NetBackup doesn't know about 
> > these tapes & so
> > will never use them, so they are just taking up space.  But I 
> > have no idea
> > how this occurred nor how to verify what these tapes are or 
> > what is on them.
> > 
> > I have taken one of these tapes that I know is not in use 
> and run the
> > following :
> >     vmquery -M <master> -deassignbyid <media> <pool> <status>
> >     vmdelete -M <master> -m <media>
> >     vmadd -h <master> -m <media> -rt tld -mt dlt -rn 1 -rh
> > <media-server> -rc1 <slot> -rc2 0 -p 8 -b <media>
> > 
> > bpmedialist still doesn't report it ... now I am confused!
> > 
> > Any ideas?  Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious here...
> > 
> > thanks, Phil
> > 
> > Phil Weber
> > IT Infrastructure Unix Systems Engineer
> > 
> > Phone: 01384 26 4136
> > Mobile: n/a