Novell Backup Exec fails due to "Cleaning Tape" error

[jeremyhache]

We have two novell servers here at work and one runs Backup Exec at night to back up the network to a Python tape drive. Ever since I've been here (almost a year) the nightly backup would fail perhaps once every 2 or 3 weeks with the error, "There is a cleaning tape in the drive. Please replace tape and retry" (I'm not sure if I worded it exactly, but it's pretty close) When I would get this error I would clean the drive a couple times with a cleaning tape, then it would be fine for another 2-3 weeks. In the past 3 weeks, we're lucky if the server backs up successfully twice a week. And it's always the same error. We've noticed, though, that if you catch the error, then run the backup again, it will back up successfully. Has anyone heard of this "cleaning tape" error before and has anyone had it occur so prevalently? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

If this should be posted in another forum just let me know. Thanks again.

 

[ski]

Make sure it's being cleaned with a new cleaning tape.

If it is and the problem still happens, then the tape head is probably worn out.

 

[ANFPS26]

You might want to post this in one of the Novell forums:

forum43 Jim

Please come back and let us know if your
problem is fixed and what fixed it!!

 

[JennITChick]

Or the BackupExec forum, which I used a bit when I was working for a company that was having a lot of the same problems (and still is, at least the last time I talked to my former boss). Jennifer Sigman
Unemployed again

 

[CartagenaSoftware]

These are just general suggestions on how to solve such a problem:
1) The message says that there is a cleaning tape in the drive, when a "writable" tape is expected. You didn't say whether the message was correct or not. It could be that someone else, or a robot/picker/loader has loaded a cleaning tape into the drive manually or automatically and this needs to be extracted and replaced with a normal "writable" tape onto which a backup can be written. (This does not mean that the tape drive needs cleaning, just that the wrong tape is loaded)
2) If the message is incorrect, and there is a normal writable tape in the drive (not a cleaning tape), then the software issuing that message is at fault. This is probably coming from Backup Exec, which is incorrectly detecting a cleaning tape. You could try to recreate the problem predictably by manually attempting backups with a cleaning tape loaded, and then replacing with a normal tape and see which messages are generated. Then look for existing Backup Exec maintenance that will address the problem, or report the new problem to the vendor (Veritas).
3) You should consider a process to recover from backup failures - you should not accept failures. That might mean generating an alert and someone responds by coming onsite to recover from the problem.