Hi fellow Bacula users and enthusiasts... I have a question regarding the handling of cleaning tapes in an autochanger.
I am running Bacula 1.36.3 with a HP SureStore DAT 40x6 autochanger, and it has been working quite well for some time. I am now in the process of replacing an old set of tapes with new ones. This issue came to light while I was labelling the new tapes. Here's some background... When I initially set this system up, I adapted the mtx-changer script to simulate barcodes as documented in http://www.bacula.org/rel-manual/Autochangers_Support.html (see: Simulating Barcodes in your Autochanger). I also have the line: Cleaning Prefix = "CLN" in the Pool section of my bacula-dir.conf file. My cleaning tape is in slot 6, and the name "CLN" is listed by slot 6 in the /etc/bacula/changer.volumes file that mtx-changer uses to simulate barcode labels with. And here's what happened today when I labelled the tapes... When I issued the command "label barcodes" in bconsole, it looks like it handled the loading, labelling and unloading of the regular tapes properly, and it appears to have skipped loading and labelling of the cleaning tape as it is supposed to do. When it came to the cleaning tape, it reported "Catalog record for cleaning tape "CLN" successfully created." After that was finished, I issued an "update slots" command, and then "list volumes" to see whether everything looked ok. The curious thing is that when I issue the "list volumes" command, the cleaning tape looks a lot like a normal tape in the catalog. Here's what it's showing (NOTE: some column names are shortened for readability, some columns omitted): *list volumes Pool: Default +---------+---------+---------+----------+----------+---------+------+-- ---------+-----------+ | MediaId | VolName | VolStat | VolBytes | VolFiles | Recycle | Slot | InChanger | MediaType | +---------+---------+---------+----------+----------+---------+------+-- ---------+-----------+ | 32 | CoLo4A | Append | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | DDS-4 | | 33 | CoLo4B | Append | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | DDS-4 | | 34 | CoLo4C | Append | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | DDS-4 | | 35 | CoLo4D | Append | 1 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1 | DDS-4 | | 36 | CoLo4E | Append | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 1 | DDS-4 | | 37 | CLN | Append | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 1 | | +---------+---------+---------+----------+----------+---------+------+-- ---------+-----------+ * (All VolRetention values were reported as 2,322,800 and all LastWritten values are 0000-00-00 00:00:00 - including the cleaning tape.) The word "Append" and the value of "1" under the "Recycle" column concerns me. I also notice that it doesn't have a "MediaType" value. I just want to make sure Bacula doesn't attempt to mount the backup tape as a regular volume. Perhaps the handling of cleaning tapes in the catalog could be better documented in the Bacula Users Guide. So my questions are: Is this how a cleaning tape is supposed to appear in the catalog (with an "Append" status, Recycle=1 and no MediaType)? When doing a backup job, does Bacula use any part of the cleaning tape's catalog record (besides VolumeName) to determine that the tape is in fact a cleaning tape? Curious, -Ryan ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idt77&alloc_id492&op=click _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
