[Bacula-users] bacula purges wrong volume according to lastwritten

[Maria M. <ma...@sh...>]

Hi there,

I know this subject has come up before, but I couldn't find a satisfying 
answer (could be because I got frustrated with both the gmane and 
sourceforge interfaces). I have 16 tapes that I am using for a weekly 
backup that takes 4 tapes. I can't get it to cycle through the tapes in 
a sane way. For example:

*list volumes pool=Weekly
+---------+------------+-----------+--------------+----------+--------------+---------+------+-----------+-----------+---------------------+
| MediaId | VolumeName | VolStatus | VolBytes     | VolFiles | 
VolRetention | Recycle | Slot | InChanger | MediaType | LastWritten 
     |
+---------+------------+-----------+--------------+----------+--------------+---------+------+-----------+-----------+---------------------+
| 4       | A0000006   | Full      | 79362076751  | 79       | 2160000 
     | 1       | 4    | 1         | VXA-2     | 2006-09-09 05:15:23 |
| 5       | A0000007   | Full      | 100904116589 | 100      | 2160000 
     | 1       | 5    | 1         | VXA-2     | 2006-10-14 12:41:53 |
| 9       | B0000001   | Full      | 99954370892  | 99       | 2160000 
     | 1       | 6    | 1         | VXA-2     | 2006-10-14 08:08:54 |
| 10      | B0000002   | Used      | 77612588182  | 79       | 2160000 
     | 1       | 7    | 1         | VXA-2     | 2006-09-09 19:05:25 |
| 11      | B0000005   | Full      | 78808048051  | 78       | 2160000 
     | 1       | 4    | 0         | VXA-2     | 2006-09-16 18:53:08 |
| 12      | B0000006   | Purged    | 79411170848  | 79       | 2160000 
     | 1       | 5    | 0         | VXA-2     | 2006-09-16 11:39:32 |
| 17      | D0000002   | Recycle   | 1            | 0        | 2160000 
     | 1       | 6    | 0         | VXA-2     | 2006-09-16 05:37:07 |
| 18      | A0000001   | Full      | 78939313776  | 79       | 2160000 
     | 1       | 7    | 0         | VXA-2     | 2006-09-17 17:59:50 |
| 32      | E0000005   | Full      | 100050107110 | 100      | 2160000 
     | 1       | 4    | 0         | VXA-2     | 2006-09-30 18:55:36 |
| 37      | A0000002   | Full      | 101892440467 | 101      | 2160000 
     | 1       | 5    | 0         | VXA-2     | 2006-09-30 23:34:33 |
| 52      | F0000007   | Full      | 106290481269 | 106      | 2160000 
     | 1       | 6    | 0         | VXA-2     | 2006-10-01 04:42:56 |
| 53      | F0000008   | Used      | 12416649864  | 13       | 2160000 
     | 1       | 7    | 0         | VXA-2     | 2006-10-01 05:44:07 |
+---------+------------+-----------+--------------+----------+--------------+---------+------+-----------+-----------+---------------------+

Why did bacula decide to recycle/purge tapes that were last written on 
Sept 16 instead of a volume that was last written on Sept 9th? I'm sure 
there is some logical reason for this, but it is not obvious to me, and 
I therefor don't know what I can do to remedy the situation. I'm 
wondering if there is some other way to cycle through these tapes so 
that it is easier to predict which four tapes bacula will want each 
week. Right now I have to play a game where I disable tapes as bacula 
picks the wrong ones until bacula picks a tape that I have put in the 
changer (for what I thought were logical reasons!). Here is my current 
weekly definition:

Pool {
   Name = Weekly
   Volume Use Duration = 5d # only uses each tape for one week
   Pool Type = Backup
   Cleaning Prefix = "CLN"
   AutoPrune = yes
   VolumeRetention = 25d
   Recycle = yes
}

How can I do this better? Thanks for any advice, cheers, Maria