Problem with expired tapes

[Scrapz]

Hi,

I'm having an issue with expired tapes. Once they expire they immediately go to scratch, which I'm fine with. The only issue is that once they go into scratch for some reason netbackup does not see them there and my backups fail. I don't know if these tapes are expiring after the backup or possibly during the backup then in the which the backup is running when the tape is pushed to the scratch pool. If someone has any advise at all that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

 

[OzzMosiz]

Scrapz, what version of NetBackup, OS of Master/Media servers.
Have you set-up any logs to see what is going on?

 

[Scrapz]

Hi thanks for the reply,

I'm running 6.5. No I have no created any logs. Is there an easy way to go about doing that?

 

[mrjazz]

The log files are placed in the /usr/openv/veritas/netbackup/logs directory.
Be careful ... NetBackup logs can be extremely large (depending on the verbose level - see below).

For each NetBackup process a subdirectory must be created on a NetBackup server.

On a media server you should create at least a bpbrm directory to log your backup and restore requests and a bptm directory to log interactions with the tape device (or a bpdm directory if you are writing your backups to disk).

On the master at least for the main NetBackup process bprd a directory should be created.

For the verbose level you have to edit the bp.conf file and include a line "VERBOSE = ?" (as far as I remember you can enter a number between 1 and 5), then stop and start all the NetBackup daemons to activate all new log dirs.

mrjazz

 

[OzzMosiz]

Good advice from MrJazz, I'd also add a 'admin' log on the Master server - always useful.
Always keep a good eye on your filesystem space - if possible, move your logs to a seperate filesystem and create a symlink if you really need logs.

 

[RustyMajor]

With 6.x Symantec added unified logging as they are going to move away from the legacy directory and file method of logging. While most processes will log into their respective directory as MrJazz mentioned, this may not be the case with some newer processes.

More specific to your problem, though, I remember that older versions of NetBackup would have this problem of not recycling back to the scratch pool, but this was fixed back in late 4.5 I thought. Do you have a scratch pool defined, and if so, is this the same pool your tapes are put in when they are brought into the environment for the first time?

 

[Stumpr]

check the "Media logs" under the "Reports" section of the GUI for any warnings or errors.

Check the case/syntax of the scratch pool and check the pool number

check the media type

Bob Stump
VERITAS - "Ain't it the truth?"

 

[Stumpr]

Scrapz...what's up?

Bob Stump
VERITAS - "Ain't it the truth?"

 

[Scrapz]

Sorry for not replying back in a decent time, but I'm still having issues. Three days in a row now my daily tapes have not backup at all. Same case, the tape goes into scratch, never gets used. I dont know what else to do. How is it that the exchange tape which has the same expiration time and yet it never fails and it is always used. Except my daily just fails out constantly. I mean should I be setting these tapes to maybe expire a day before or something when they are supposed to back up?

 

[akcongo]

What is the media status of the tapes in the scratch pool? If you don't see the Media Status column right-click on the column headers and go to Columns, Layout. Find Media Status and click the icon on the top to Show. Then the Media Status column will show. Check to see if the tapes are frozen. If NBU finds a problem with media it will freeze the tape so it doesn't get written on. I've had NBU freeze tapes without me knowing it and then they are sitting in scratch but they won't get used because they are frozen.

 

[Scrapz]

Akcongo:

The daily tape that last night that was thrown into scratch and not used has a media status of active.

 

[Scrapz]

I forgot all about this thread that I created and since I have another issue that I'm going to post about I figured I would drop and give the solution to what my issue was. I called symantec and I found out that it was because of my expiration date of the tapes themselves. I guess what Veritas does is if you set an expiration date of lets say a week, you are not going to be able to use that tape until a week later to the second. So the last time the tape was written to is at 2:00 AM a week ago you are not going to be able to use that tape until 2 AM the following week. My scheduled backups start at 10 PM so by the time it tried to use my daily tape it could not use it because it was not 2 AM yet. Hopefully that helps people out if they ever come across that issue.