--On Monday, May 16, 2005 13:45:47 +1000 "Keenan, Greg John (Greg)** CTR **" 
<gjkeenan AT lucent DOT com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Are there any problems associated with changing the order of the tapes in
> tapelist?

Only if it causes a tape you need to save to be overwritten ;-)

> I have just taken over this backup environment and one of the backup configs
> have several tapes "out of order" i.e. they are not sequential which some
> backup operators are finding confusing.

If you just feed it the tapes amcheck asks for, which are also mentioned
in the previous daily report (the second line: The next [x] tape[s] Amanda
expects to used [is|areare]: [xxxnn, ...]) and don't worry about the numbers,
then everything is fine.  However, out of order tapescan cause problems if
they are loaded in magazines or need to be rotated offsite, since people have
a tendency to keep 'helping' by putting them back in order.

> 
> All tapes in the set have a status of reuse.  

All tapes will have a status of reuse, even the one that was just written
to, unless you have told amanda specifically not to reuse one with amadmin
<config> no-reuse <tapelabel>.

> The tapes out of order are
> several months old and are scheduled to be reused in the next few weeks.

If they were last written more than tapecycle tapes ago (which implies you
have more than tapecycle tapes labeled) then you should be able to rearrange
them without causing problems.
   One way, which doesn't require any editing of the tapelist, is to just 
amadmin
no-reuse the out of order tapes, and then amadmin reuse each one on the day
you want it to be reused again. Be aware that you must have at least tapecycle
tapes marked reuse in your tapelist or amanda will ask for a new tape.
So if your current order is 1 2 4 3 5, no-reuse 4 until after three is written
to, and then reuse it. Since it will then be the oldest tape it will be used
next.
   If you have several tapes out of order, you need to reverse the order of
tapes that will be used on the same run, or just don't think you'll remember
to mark them as reuse on the correct day, AND you're sure that the order
you're rearranging them to won't cause them to be overwritten before the data
on them has 'expired', just edit the tapelist.  The tape most recently written
is at the top, and the one to be used next is at the bottom.  I'm not sure if
just the position is used, the date, or both,  so when I've edited it adjust the
dates as well as the position (you can have duplicate dates).

> If I can change tapelist I assume I need to change tapelist.yesterday also?

I don't think you need to, it's just a backup copy of the tapelist made before
it updates it.  Perhaps it is copied back in case something fails.

Frank
 
> Thanks for your help.
> 
> Regards,
> Greg.



--
Frank Smith                                                fsmith AT hoovers 
DOT com
Sr. Systems Administrator                                 Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online                                             Fax: 512-374-4501