How to manually remove a tape completely from NetBackup/Media Manager.
Details:
First, if there are images on the tape, they need to be expired. This can be done by:
bpexpdate -ev <mediaid> -d 0
This will not completely free up the tape if the tape is frozen or suspended, so the command(s):
bpmedia -unfreeze -ev <mediaid>
or
bpmedia -unsuspend -ev <mediaid>
may be needed.
At this point there will be no image database entries for that tape and the media database should show the tape as not assigned therefore allowing the tape to be reused. However sometimes the image database and the media manager database can be out of sync, and the tape may show as still assigned, or if the tape has a NetBackup database backup on it, there would be no image entry to begin with. When a tape shows an assigned date, but no images are related to that tape, it will show up in the available_media report as dbbackup. To tell if a tape actually has a dbbackup on it, the command:
vmquery -m mediaid
will show a status, where 0x0 means normal backups, 0x1 means NetBackup database backup and 0x2 means Storage Migrator.
If it is 0x1, be certain this is not a database backup which will ever be needed.
If it is 0x2, it is in use by Storage Migrator and understanding of the use of the tape by Storage Migrator (not covered here) is required.
To free up the tape, when it has an assigned date but no images in the database, the command:
vmquery -deassignbyid <mediaid> <poolnumber> <status>
must be run, but the status will be displayed as 0x0, 0x1 or 0x2 and needs to be just 0, 1 or 2 in the vmquery -deassignbyid.
At this point the tape is available to be used for backups.
If the tape was bad or destroyed and that is why it is being removed, the command:
vmdelete -m <mediaid>
will remove the last remnants of information about it from media manager.
There are other options which may be specified for the above commands. Some are to specify server names, volume database host names, etc. If the NetBackup/Media Manager setup is complex, those options may be needed. The full paths to the commands mentioned are:
/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/bpexpdate
/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/bpmedia
/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/goodies/available_media
/usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmquery
usr/openv/volmgr/bin/vmdelete
All but available_media have man pages.
Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states something as certain, that does not make it a fact and that is truth.
