Set tape to "recyclable" mode, but still shows "write protected&q

[jesseroscoe]

I have a 24 tape jukebox connected to my Networker server and have had a handful of tapes showing up in the logs and on the nwadmin main screen as being write protected. The physical write protect switches on the tapes are NOT set. In the Volumes gui, the tapes show as expired and recyclable. For one of them, I was able to finally reuse the tape by running "nsrmm -dV volID". This did not work for the others. For another tape, I had to do a removal of the volume first. Can somebody tell me where this write protection is set and the proper way to remove the protection? Thanks.


Details:
Networker 7.1 (I know it's old, but a lack of funds prevents upgrading at this time.)
Adic Scalar 24 jukebox w/ IBM LTO2 tape drive
LTO2 200/400 tapes

 

[605]

If a tape is recyclable, that is all it needs.
NW will use and relabel it - when it is needed.
NW will not relabel recyclable tapes right away of ensure that you can still recover if you really need the data back.

BTW, your command "nsrmm -d" just deletes the tape from the media index - it does not relabel it at this time.

However, you may of course relabel your tapes in advance at any time.

 

[jesseroscoe]

If a tape is recyclable, that is all it needs. "

That's what my thinking was. That's why I was confused when the tapes showed up in one place as "recyclable", but when they were loaded into the drive, they showed up as "write protected". And the physical write protect switch on the tape is definitely not set. Makes me wonder if this is just a bug in this older version of Networker.

 

[denisfr]

Hello,

"but when they were loaded into the drive"
this operation was initiated automatically by NW or by a human being ?

Have you tried to recycle a tape manually ?

 

[jesseroscoe]

denisfr,

I have manually initiated the loading of these volumes into the drive. I can't remember now if Networker tried to load them automatically as well. I have gone through the options in the nwadmin gui to manually mark the tapes as recyclable. I have toggled them back and forth between manual and auto recycle, as well as between recyclabe, read-only and appendable just hoping to clear some flag somewhere. But no matter what I set them to, when I load them into the drive, the Networker gui shows these mounted volumes as "write-protected".

 

[605]

Probably even a GUI problem. User the nsrmm command and set the options 'recyclable' and 'notreadonly'.

If you really want to reuse the tapes, simply re-label them manually. This should work, even if the tape appears as write-protected (read-only).

 

[denisfr]

What version of NMC ?
I've problems with the one provided with the 7.5.1 for AIX, which gives me false information about filling percentage of tapes...

 

[605]

Sorry dennisfr - he is using NW 7.1, so no NMC yet.

 

[denisfr]

oops ! reading again the original message shows me the version...

 

[jesseroscoe]

Thanks for all of your replies. I'll have to wait until the problem recurs to try manually relabeling the tape(s). I am pretty convinced that this is just a bug seeing as Networker is giving me contradicting information about my volumes, depending on which part of the gui I'm looking at. Hopefully, the manual relabeling will provide a workaround until I can upgrade. If it happens again (and I'm sure it will), I'll post the results.