9.5.4.2615 sees all my tapes as WORM

[roeland.de.windt]

Ever since our VBR installation was upgraded to 9.5.4, all tapes in our (HPE MSL2024) tapelib are detected as WORM. They are not! They are the same RW tapes we've always been using. Don't know if it is VBR or the tapelib (unchanged), but I know only the VBR part has been updated and problems started at that point.

[Dima P.]

Hello Roeland,

Are these tapes labeled with barcodes? If yes, can you please the example of the barcode label for the affected tape media? Thank you!

[roeland.de.windt]

Yes they do have barcodes. One of them (an example in a series) reads "AGY095LV". All have same AGY-number-LV naming scheme. All tapes affected.

[roeland.de.windt]

FYI, I just inserted a tape from another batch, barcode "ERE178L5" and that one is recognised correctly as R/W. How can a barcode change that designation? All are standard LTO-5 tapes. Please enlighten me... I would like to keep on using my "AGYxxxLV" tapes as well...

[roeland.de.windt]

Guess I found my answer here: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgece ... ehlab.html

It's the suffix that matters. LV stands for 5th gen LTO WORM tape, L5 stands for 5th gen LTO RW tape...

Is there a way to override this in software is my next question then. In previous VBR versions I had no issues with this.

[veremin]

Previously WORM tapes have not been supported, thus, you haven't had this issue.

I'm afraid there is no way to change WORM detection selection mechanism.

Thanks!

[roeland.de.windt]

A former colleague labeled all tapes the wrong way... LV on RW tapes and L5 on WORM tapes.
Luckily I had spare L5 barcode labels so I just relabeled my tapes.
It’s a feature, not a bug!
Case closed.

[veremin]

Good to know that you've solved the issue.

Let us know if additional help is needed.

Thanks!

[dkvello]

It must be a Tapeworm

[ChrisJ0907]

Looks like I've just had this same issue. Case# 03480088 my tapes are labelled AJL5xxLV and changing to IPGxxxL5 no longer sees tape as WORM. It also corrupted one of my media vaults too, until I removed some tapes from the catalog.

[roeland.de.windt]

@ChrisJ0907. That's what I did as well, the catalog became inconsistent. Luckily we had no important history in it (we rotate on a 3-week schedule without any retention such as grandfather father son scheme), so I deleted everything from the catalog. What I also noted is that some newly labeled tapes still showed their old barcode, which I was able to change in tape properties one by one.