In regard to: [Networker] Confused about setting volume to readonly and...:

Is it "nsrmm  -v -o readonly,manual volume"? I figured I would ask, before
just plowing ahead and changing something, perhaps wrongly. I'm confused
as to how to change the retention to "always".

That only changes things for the *volume*.  I kind of glossed over that
in the message I sent a few days ago, trying to clarify "Read Only".

If you set the volume readonly,manual, the volume itself will never be
recycled, which means that the media database entries will never be
expired.  You'll always know what savesets are on that tape.

The client index entires *will* still expire though, which means that
although you'll know what savesets are on the tape (including client name,
client filesystem, date, etc), you won't actually have index entries for
the contents of the saveset.

If you want to keep those savesets browseable, you need to increase the
browse (and since retention must be >= browse, you will likely need to
increase the retention too) time.

As an aside, don't I want the retention on my month end tapes to be
forever? And if so, don't I want the browsing of those same tapes to also
be forever, so that I cana find just that 1 file in the whole 300G
saveset?

Assuming you want your client indexes to grow without limit, sure.  ;-)

It's a tradeoff.  As long as the tapes don't get recycled, you can always
rebuild the client index using scanner on the savesets on the tape, or
using nsrck if you also have the index: saveset for the client.

If you have the space on your index filesystem for your client indexes to
keep one full per month, for years on end, then there's no reason to keep
just the tape, you might as well keep everything browseable.

Remember that the size of the client index is determined by the *number*
of files that were backed up.

And does that them mean that I want to mark these volumes as
"archive" (if I'm reading the manual correctly).

I'm not sure; we're licensed for the archive features, but we've never
actually used them.

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                                        Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT edu
Information Technology Services                   (701) 231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building                        (701) 231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164

To sign off this list, send email to listserv AT listserv.temple DOT edu and type 
"signoff networker" in the body of the email. Please write to networker-request 
AT listserv.temple DOT edu if you have any problems with this list. You can access the 
archives at http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/networker.html or
via RSS at http://listserv.temple.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=NETWORKER