I'm not one to let a good thread die, so .... :). I agree with Bob, there is no affinity between physical tape media and a physical tape drive.
However, what would have happened (and caused VX support to suggest bpexpdate'ing the media) is a RVSN/EVSN mismatch. Consider a pair of brand new SL8500s, with new media and a mismatched drive configuration. Kicking off a large number of backup will cause a large number of media to show up in drives. Any given backup job mounting a new tape only cares that a tape shows up in the /dev/rmt which it expects. If tape id T1 is requested to D1, but T2 shows up in D1, your backup job has no way to know there is a problem. The mt status says "media present", and the job goes on it's way. The tape, however, is physically labeled T1, yet is a RVSN of T2 (i.e. RVSN != EVSN). During the next backup cycle, a request for T1 will show a RVSN of T2, and the mount errors should begin. What I don't know is if expiring the media, will cause NetBackup to write a new VSN during the next backup cycle. Justin, you might consider re-bplabeling your media to prevent future problems. Cheers Mike >If the drives are incorrectly addressed, then backups are run, and then the >drives are >correctly addressed, those tapes previous written to will upon a next mount >request will be >mounted into the incorrect drive and result in an error. >I too have done this (more times than I care to think about) and when >working with Veritas >support received the same resolution (going back to 3.1) about using >bpexpdate. >I don't recall if there was any documentation about this at the time but >I'm thinking that information >may be stored in the non-dot-f file or in one of the DB's on the media >server (/volmgr/database). _______________________________________________ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu