Re: [Bacula-users] Cleaning Jobs

[Kern S. <ke...@si...>]

On Thursday 22 February 2007 08:39, Pierre Bernhardt wrote:
> Arno Lehmann schrieb:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 2/21/2007 11:52 AM, HAWKER, Dan (external) wrote:
> >> Hi All,
> >>
> >> Am presently in the midst of configuring Bacula to backup some
> >> aggregated data from a few servers to tape. All works fine, however am
> >> slightly confused wrt cleaning tapes.
> >>
> >> According to the manual you can assign a cleaning prefix, however as I
> >> understand this is only useful for autochangers with barcodes.
> >
> > Right.
> >
> >> So how do you create a cleaning job???
> >
> > I don't.
> >
> >> For instance I'd like to assign
> >> slot6 as a cleaning slot, and then create a *CleaningJob* that loads and
> >> accesses the cleaning tape, once a week. Say on Sunday evening when
> >> nothing should be happening.
> >
> > No. I would not do this.
>
> Ok.
>
> > Modern tape drives can decide themselves when they need to get cleaned.
> > Cleaning more often than strictly necessary will no only use up the
> > cleaning cartridge but might also damage your tape drive and invalidate
> > its warranty.
> >
> > Autochangers can usually manage cleaning on their own - you dedicate one
> > slot to the cleaning tape, and everything else happens automatically. I
> > don't know if tis interferes witch Baculas operation, though - I don't
> > operate an autochanger like that.
>
> Usually only, if this is a high expensive tape library. I have bought an
> Libra-8 8 cartrige DDS-3 and an 6 cartrige DDS-2 HP libraries.
> Both libs have no barcode reade.
> It is possible that both can use a cleaning cartrige.
>
> But update slots scan command after cartrige change of the other ones
> are not a good Idea because the cleaning cartrige is loaded, too.
> At this time the tape is loaded but will eject by the drive but not unload.
> And bacula don't eat the cartrige and is still waiting for the
> data on it (but could never read them)
>
> >> Is this supported in Bacula, or is it just easier/better to have a quick
> >> and dirty script run from cron, that uses mtx to load and then unload
> >> the tape???
>
> If I use mtx bacula will not see what I did with the other cartriges.
> So I got problems because bacula has other information stored.
>
> > There is a feature request open regarding better tape cleaning
> > management... until that is implemented, I do that manually.
>
> At first I need a option so bacula will never use a proibited slot.
> At the moment I know only, that I can use Cleaning prefix and than
> add the Cartrige manually by add command. But I have not test this
> because the update slot scan feature will check the slot again.

It seems to me that help for you to read up on the Cleaning prefix, and either 
ask questions if you don't understand it, or better yet, do your own 
experimentation using it.  Using the Cleaning prefix, as far as I can see, 
will probably solve 90% of your problems.  The other problems seem to be 
related to the *possible* need to tweak the mtx-changer script in the 
documentation case of tape ejection.

Once you understand what already exists in Bacula specifically to address this 
problem, then you could formulate your complaints/concerns a bit more 
accurately.  This comment particularly applies to your feature list below.

One thing that you will not find in the manual, at least not very clearly 
spelled out is that Bacula provides the basic support for a lot of features, 
more is being added over time, but for certain things such as old technology 
tape drives (which include all DDS technology), you will probably have to 
deal yourself with the problems.  For most modern tape drives, you can 
actually damage the drive by doing cleaning more often than as requested by 
the drive itself, so the benefit of adding many additional cleaning features 
in Bacula is questionable.  We are adding much more extensive 
drive "accounting" statistics ...


>
> Only modifying the mtxchanger script is a workaround, but then
> I must modify it on a very dirty way.
>
> > Whenever there is a tapealert (which you can get into Baculas job
> > report) or a drive failure, it's time for manual intervention. Not
> > really a serious problem, because in a clean environment you won't have
> > to clean your drives very often. And you wouldn't want to operate a
> > modern tape drive in a dusty environment :-)
>
> Ok. Some points of a feature for next bacula:
>
> Here my feature request for a cleaning enhacement:
>
> 1. It should be possible to declare for one or more cleaning slots
>    in a library.
> 2. A max. cleaning procedures for a cleaning tape should declared.
> 3. The cleaning procedure should only arrange by bacula (count the
>    cleaning procedures)
> 4. The cleaning procedure should be declared by a job.
> 5. The job should be run by a request (tape alert, run command,...)
> 6. The cleaning job should be abort if the number of cleaning requests
>    are arrived (message or other)
> 7. update slots scan should never scan the defined cleaning slots.
> 8. cleaning slots should never requests for reading/writing.
>
> What did the tape if I do cleaning manually:
> (Cleaning cartrige in slot 8)
> 1. mtx load 8
> The changer loads the cartrige in the drive
> The drive inject the cartrige and cleaning process is startet.
> The drive ejects the cartrige and know its different:
> Libra-8: mtx unload 8 is needed because the drive eject don't
>    unload the cartrige back in slot.
> HP 12000: The drive eject the cartrige and the changer unloads
>    the cartrige automatically back in the slot (6)
>    (I'm not reallly shure. didn't use the library any more)
>
> Discussion is welcome :-)
>
> MfG...
> Pierre Bernhardt
>
>
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