I thought the expiration date in the vmquery was the date that all of 
the images on the tape would have been expired and the tape can be 
unassigned, ready to be used again.  I have many tapes that have an 
expiration date of INFINITY that have images that never expire.  Some 
have no expiration date at all. Or, are my 9940 tapes so good that they 
never wear out? :)

Are you thinking of the maximum number of mounts allowed?

Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com wrote:

>These are different dates that you think, I suspect.  
>
>Vmquery's "expiration date" is the date that the tape media itself expires,
>ie: the tape becomes too old to use further).  Some companies make the
>assumption that any tape more than 18 months old is suspect to failure so
>they refuse to use the tape past that time. This is media expiration time.
>Netbackup will refuse to use a tape past it's media expiration date.
>
>bpmedialist draws its info from the Image DB and prints the date that the
>last image on that tape is due to expire.  This is the date that the tape is
>marked empty, is deassigned, and is reusable for new backups.
>
>Unfortunately, two different "expiration dates" that are not well
>differentiated in the command set.
>
>-M
>
> -----Mensagem original-----
>De: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>[mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu]Em nome de Parnell, Bill
>Enviada em: quinta-feira, 31 de março de 2005 05:52
>Para: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>Assunto: [Veritas-bu] Query regarding the vmquery command
>
>
>Hi all,
>Can someone tell me why when I execute the following command I do not get
>any information in the expiration datetime column?
>
>vmquery -a -w
>
>I can get expiration dates from the bpmedialist command and can parse the
>output to associate the exp dates to the media id's I would just like to
>know why it is not listed in the vmquery command.  All the entries are
>coming back as 00/00/0000 00:00  the rest of the results are fine as far as
>I can tell.
>
>Best Regards,
>Bill.
>  
>


-- 
Jack L. Forester, Jr.
UNIX Systems Administrator, Stf
Lockheed Martin Information Technology
(304) 625-3946