Why are my tapes marked as Private after an I/O failure?

foobar2devnull

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PREDATAR Control23

Hi All,

I have been having major problems with my tape usage which was way too high. It looks more and more like a drive failure.

Code:
12/15/2014 08:46:53      ANR2280I Full database backup started as process 2.
                          (SESSION: 4, PROCESS: 2)
12/15/2014 08:47:35      ANR8530W Volume AA0331L5 in drive DRV01 in library BRG01
                          is not labeled. (SESSION: 4, PROCESS: 2)
12/15/2014 08:47:35      ANR8355E I/O error reading label for volume AA0331L5 in
                          drive DRV01 (/dev/IBMtape0). (SESSION: 4, PROCESS: 2)
12/15/2014 08:48:01      ANR8778W Scratch volume AA0331L5 changed to Private Status
                          to prevent re-access. (SESSION: 4, PROCESS: 2)

I believe that DRV01 is broken or needs a good clean. The problem I am having is that he is putting tapes in a status of Private. I'd expect Readonly or Unavailable.

Could someone explain to me why that is? Can I simply change the status of the Tapes that show as Private but without data as Readwrite?

Code:
BRG01            AA0269L5        Private              TSMINST1       Data          4,154       LTO
BRG01            AA0271L5        Private              TSMINST1                     4,157       LTO
BRG01            AA0272L5        Private              TSMINST1                     4,153       LTO

Any advice is welcome! ;)
 
PREDATAR Control23

TSM does that to protect itself from bad tapes. In the case of scratch tapes, it marks them private to prevent re-access, in the case of private tapes, it puts them read-only. That's so that it does not try to write on tape that is potentially bad.

It's up to the administrator to troubleshoot the problem with the tape, see if the problem is with the tape or the drive. If the tape is fine, it can be updated to scratch, if not then discarded.

In your case, the tape is fine, it's because it was not labelled first, so there was an error reading the label.

Just label that volume, then update it as scratch:
Code:
help label libvolume
help update volume
 
PREDATAR Control23

Thank you marclant, very clear explanation. I changed some automation scripts and they did not label but checkin instead.

Thanks for pointing it out! I'm getting 40 tapes back :\
 
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