Jon LaBadie wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 10:39:16PM -0400, Robert Kuropkat wrote:
>> Did something bad, but not sure what.  I had a tape with a bar code 
>> label but apparently no Amanda label.  So I labeled it and hoped the 
>> next backup would write to it.  It did not.  It was tape #28 and I had 
>> already passed that number in the sequence (Tape #30).  So I figured I 
>> did something goofy and just loaded the next set.  Unfortunately, it 
>> still says it needs a new tape.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I was confident I knew what I was doing, so I also made 
>> other changes while I was there.  I had taken the top 10 tapes out of 
>> the sequence reducing it from 100 to 90.  So I took the top ten entries 
>> out of the tapelist file and changed the tapecycle entry in amanda.conf 
>> to 90.
>>
>> I'm new to Amanda and inherited this setup so aside from posting every 
>> config file, I'm not sure what the relevant entries to post would be.
>>
> 
> Couple of things.  First the entries in the tapelist file can be
> active or inactive as indicated by the "reuse/noreuse" tag.  If
> you are getting a "need a new tape" message, the number of "reuse"
> tapes is less than the tapecycle value.
> 
> Second, tapecycle need not match the actual number of tapes
> in rotation.  It must be equal to or less.  By having it less,
> when a tape is damaged or archived (and marked "noreuse" in
> tapelist) you will not get the dreaded "need a new tape".
> 
> Third, amanda does not use the tapes in human defined numeric
> order.  If it originally saw the tapes in the order 1,3,5,99,
> that is the order it will expect them in the future.  And there
> are several ways the expected order can be affected later on.
> 
> So, even thought tape 30 has been passed, tape 28's turn may
> be coming up.  Alternatively, as you labelled it just recently,
> it may be the "new tape" that amanda is seeking.  If there
> are 90 tapes listed as "reuse" in tapelist and tape 28 is the
> only one without a date last used, that is likely the case.
> 
> jl


ooh, I think you nailed it.  One of the reasons I was taking the top 10
out of the cycle was because I wanted to fill in some holes where tapes
had gotten damaged and because I had 6 sets of 15 and 1 set of 10 tapes.
 Unfortunately, I had not yet added those tapes in so I had a tape cycle
of 90 and only 87 tapes in the tape list.

Running it now to see if that works.  If so, I will add a couple more
tapes at the top of the list again to prevent this in the future.

Thanks!

Robert Kuropkat