I took a suggestion a while back to do a:

   query volume acc=reado,unavail,destroyed,offsite

as part of a daily status check.  Hopefully that would show most of your
tapes.  The one gotcha is when the error occurs on a database tape.  In this
case, the tape is marked as last used for a database backup but it is not
listed in the volhistory.  Thus its status is unchanged by a "delete
volhistory" and the tape stays as a database tape forever.

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Kelly J. Lipp wrote:

> That is what I have seen as well.  Sort of makes sense since if the tape is
> bad, it shouldn't be returned to the scratch pool only to be found wanting
> again the next time it's chosen.
>
> Kelly J. Lipp
> Storage Solutions Specialists, Inc.
> www.storsol.com
> lipp AT storsol DOT com
> (719)531-5926
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:   Prather, Wanda
> Sent:   Wednesday, February 03, 1999 2:34 PM
> To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject:        Orphan tapes in PRIVATE status
>
> ADSM V2.1.5.13 on AIX 4.2, STK9710 tape library
>
> I have just found a bunch of tapes in my library that are not defined in
> STGPOOLS or VOLHISTORY, but are marked PRIVATE instead of SCRATCH.
>
> We do not DEFINE any volumes to the STGPOOLS manually, all free tapes in
> the
> library should be in SCRATCH status.
> Library is dedicated to this one ADSM server.
>
> Many of these tapes I cannot find at all in the activity log (they could
> have been in this state a LONG time).
> But some of them I can see had mount failures:
>
> ANR9999D Mount error  xxxxxxx
> ANR1404W Scratch volume mount request denied - mount failed
>
> The mount failures occurred at different times for different tapes, and
> were
> all due to some explainable temporary problem with a drive or the tape
> robot.
>
> It looks as though when a mount fails for SCRATCH, ADSM is marking that
> tape
> as PRIVATE, even though there is no message to that effect.
> Can anybody confirm that is what really happens?
>
> Thanks.
> ***************************************************************
> Wanda Prather
> The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
> 443-778-8769
> wanda_prather AT jhuapl DOT edu
>
> "Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" -
> Scott Adams/Dilbert
> ***************************************************************
>