Technical Bulletin NetVault 7.x Device/Tape Related Issues (4047199)

Date: 06/16/06
Affected NV Version: 7.4.x
OS Version: All
Plugin version:N/A
Application version:N/A

Description of Problem
If a tape is left in a library drive at start of day or the machine is rebooted or NetVault restarted without first unloading media from the drive, a variety of Barcode and cleaning media issues may become evident as NetVault is unable to determine the nature of the tape. This is particularly evident in mixed media environments.

An explanation for the reason is detailed below:

Rationale: The algorithm to determine whether a tape is cleaning media or not requires the drive, in the first instance, to provide the information. If this is not forthcoming (as is the case with some old libraries/drives such as the StorageTek 94/80), then a timeout period is used (presently hard coded to something like 20-30 seconds) to determine if a ‘Media Present' type response is returned and if not, it is designated as a cleaning tape.

If there already exists a populated home slot for cleaning media in the library, the drive will not be able to unload because by default there is only one nominated cleaning home slot available. This can be overcome by either nominating a second cleaning media slot in the library or Exporting the media, both of which is unnecessary.

Solution
Don't leave tapes in drives at “start of day”, when restarting machines or restarting. Note: The term “start of day” refers to when the NetVault Process Manager (nvpmgr) is first started on a NetVault Server, either manually by the user after having previously stopped it, or on a machine reboot.

Please refer to the text above