I haven't seen the problem you suggest. When a tape is loaded into a drive
nsrjb should still report it in its 'home' slot in the main section output,
and in the drive summary section toward the end of the output.  For this
reason I'd be surprised if it would put the tape in a busy slot unless there
is a bug relevant to your specific jukebox or jukebox settings.

I'll share a couple of things I've learned about injecting and ejecting
tapes:

1) If the source and destination location information is not completed,
Legato will attempt to find an appropriate place for it.  On some jukeboxes
(like the ADIC Scalar 10k) this process is very time consuming and it can
take more than a minute to deposit each tape.
2) If you use the most simple -d syntax possible you won't know in which
slot the tape was in which I find quite annoying (BTW, using the -v flag you
will see this information buried in the output).
3) If you use the most simple -d syntax possible the tape will be "unknown"
to NetWorker until you inventory it.  Inventorying a tape may take two or
more minutes again adding to the time required for tape movements.

To counter these three items I do use the following syntax command (also
include -j <jukebox> if multiple jukeboxes exist):

nsrjb -d -P <src cap port> -S <dest slot> <barcode>

1) If the -P <src> -S <dst> is specified the time is reduced to a matter of
seconds while the robot arm actually moves the media.
2) No longer applicable because you specified the destination.
3) Specify the barcode being inserted and NetWorker will trust you; no
inventory required and it will show properly in nsrjb immediately!

I'd suggest you script something for deposits that uses the sjirdtag command
to discover what was where, and then deposits the tapes on a per barcode
basis using the command syntax above.  Or, if doing deposits infrequently
you could fill in the syntax above manually.  Lastly if you do only a few
tape movements use the -v flag and take the time hit for the time to find a
slot and inventorying but then you'll at least know what went where...

Cheers,
-Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stan Horwitz" <stan AT TEMPLE DOT EDU>
To: <NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 1:39 AM
Subject: [Networker] Problem with depositing tapes


> Hello NSR gurus;
>
> Would someone tell me if my thinking is incorrect on an issue involving
> using "nsrjb -d" to deposit tapes into a tape library? Here's the
> situation:
>
> Using "nsrjb -w", I removed a few tapes from our Qualstar tape library. No
> problem there. I then used "nsrjb -d" to deposit tapes into the vacant
> slots. While I did this, the six AIT-2 drives in the library had tapes in
> them and all were actively writing.
>
> Before I issued the "nsrjb -d -j aitjuke" command (no other arguments), I
> did an "nsrjb -C | grep ":     "" to see what the vacant slots were just
> out of curiosity. I then deposited two tapes, and I searched for the
> vacant slots again. Logic would dictate that there should not be any
> vacant slots after I deposited two tapes into the two slots, right? My
> results ran contrary to logic though.
>
> The same two slots that were vacant prior to depositing the tapes remain
> vacant after the tapes were deposited. This tells me that the two tapes
> were put in slots that are allocated to a tapes that are currently in the
> tape drives. Am I wrong, or is this not a good thing?
>
> This would explain why for the past few weeks, there are times when tapes
> would not eject from drives and I would find that the tape library was not
> in the state that nsr understood it to be. I wonder if there's a bug in
> the "nsrjb -d" command. It sure seems like there is, but I just wanted to
> confirm raise this possibility here. I do plan to report this to Legato
> tomorrow, and I suspect that when I arrive at work, two tapes will have
> failed to eject during tonight's backups.

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