New member added automatically

[ggirao]

I did a full backup of a raid system on LTO3 tapes (4) and wanted to do the same on LTO4. I supposed that will "eat" only two tapes, but he filled with a new member automatically. I want to change this last tape (barcode purposes) to a new one like:

 

Scenario:

backup1, backup2, new_name_backup

 

I want backup1, backup2, backup3

 

How can I do this?

[ggirao]

No one knows?

[CallMeDave]

How can I do this?

 

Sorry, but I find your question unclear.

 

 

-dave

[ggirao]

Sorry, but I find your question unclear.

 

 

-dave

 

I need to replace a member of a media set with another tape

[twickland]

I need to replace a member of a media set with another tape

You can't do this within a given media set.

 

You have two options:

1. You can create a new media set and copy the data from the existing set to the new set. To be able to copy directly from one tape media set to another, you will need two tape drives.
   
2. You can mark the tape member you want to replace as "Lost." If the "lost" member is the last member of the media set, Retrospect will then ask for a new tape member. The new member will be named for the media set, but the sequence number will be one number higher than the "lost" member.
   

Frankly though, it's still not clear from your original question why you would want to do this.

 

Whenever you create a media set, Retrospect will automatically name and number the media set members in sequence. You can't change this arrangement (nor can I think of a reason you would want to). For example, if you create a media set named "Backup A," the first member of the media set will be named "1-Backup A." Subsequent members will be named 2-Backup A, 3-Backup A, etc.

 

If you decide to mark member 3-Backup A as being lost, the next backup you make to media set Backup A will require a new tape; this new tape member will be named "4-Backup A."

[ggirao]

TY Tim, that should be enough. BTW the problem was that retrospect added automatically a member to a media set that was not meant to this backup. So if I mark with lost and add a new tape with a label that I want, that's exactly what I need.

[ggirao]

That didn't work... I Marked the tape with lost and added one more. Started the backup and retrospect stops half asking for a new media member. Even if I select, skip, mark as lost nothing happens.

[twickland]

That didn't work... I Marked the tape with lost and added one more. Started the backup and retrospect stops half asking for a new media member.

If the tape member fills with data before the backup has completed, Retrospect will ask for an additional media member; this is what's supposed to happen.

 

By "half," do you mean halfway through the backup, or do you mean that the tape has only half the amount of data on it that you expect?

 

Even if I select, skip, mark as lost nothing happens.

It's not clear what you did here, or when you did it. Did you mark another member as lost? When did you select "skip?"

 

By "nothing happens," do you mean literally nothing? Or do you mean just that you were not able to get Retrospect to do what you wanted?

 

You have not given us enough information. Please spell out in detail every step that you have taken, what messages you got from Retrospect, etc.

[ggirao]

OK, When I said half, was half the backup (I have about 2,2TB and stops when remains 1TB). I think that's when is going to fill a new tape. When stops, keeps asking for new media and I have the option to: cancel, Skip, Lost, Done or Add. Here within any option doesn't do nothing; accepts my selection but doesn't go further on the backup. Today late night I will try again and send some screenshots here. I'm considering to erase the tapes and start a new backup set.

[ggirao]

Here it goes

[twickland]

OK; I see that you are backing up to media set White_backup and that member 3-White_backup is in the drive. Retrospect is asking for a new member, to be named 5-White_backup. This would seem to indicate that you told Retrospect to skip member #4.

 

Your screenshot does not show all the slots in your autoloader, but the slots that are visible have tapes belonging to a different media set (ByJunkStuff). If there is either a blank tape or a tape named 5-White_backup in one of the library slots, Retrospect should have automatically begun to use it. So my next question is, is there such a tape in the autoloader that Retrospect has failed to use?

[ggirao]

should be #4 thats free, why isnt adding?

[ggirao]

well, opted to erase all tapes and started a new backup

[twickland]

should be #4 thats free, why isnt adding?

Your screenshot shows the members of the media set but not what's in the autoloader library or the tape drive. Besides, it looks like member 4 is full, which would correspond with Retrospect's asking for a new tape to be named 5-White_backup.

 

If you've marked member 3 as lost, why does it appear in the drive in your earlier screenshot? If you wanted to reuse that tape, you should have erased it first.

 

well, opted to erase all tapes and started a new backup

That's one solution. If (as it sounded in your original post) you're trying to get your barcodes to correspond in some way with specific media members' names, you should be sure to name the blank tapes and add them to the media set before the tapes are actually needed, and always be sure that you have at least a couple of named blank members in reserve in the autoloader. This should work, at least in theory. (Earlier versions of Retrospect would sometimes ignore the naming of the tape members and use any blank tape. I have no experience as to whether this has been fixed in Retro 9, though your bar coding should make that kind of error less likely)

[ggirao]

Yep, The tape #4 was full, but why? If I had 2,1TB to fill and 4 tapes (3 LTO4 and 1 LTO3). 3x1TB + 1x800MB = 3,8TB weird.

 

As I said, i opted to erase the tapes and start a full backup, and now everything is ok and clear. TY for your help and tips (leave blank tapes on the autoloader) next steps I won't do mistakes.

[twickland]

Yep, The tape #4 was full, but why? If I had 2,1TB to fill and 4 tapes (3 LTO4 and 1 LTO3). 3x1TB + 1x800MB = 3,8TB weird.

Maybe not. You actually only had 3 tapes, not 4. Remember, you marked tape 3 as lost, which would mean that Retrospect needed to back up any files that had originally been backed up to member 3 (provided, of course, that those files still resided on your source volumes).

 

Also, LTO-3 tapes have a native capacity of 400 MB and LTO-4 800 MB. Manufacturers assume a compression ratio of 50% when labeling LTO-3 tapes as 800 MB and LTO-4 tapes as 1.6 TB; most real-world setups never achieve that kind of capacity (as you yourself found: the LTO-4 tapes you listed for us only achieved 1 TB at best; not 1.6 TB). If you have slow network backups of files that are not compressible, you might not even be able to fill a tape to its native capacity (tape drives function most efficiently when the incoming data stream is as fast as the drive can handle).

[ggirao]

Now Clear :-)

 

I Understand the problem of not filling the tape. Thank you for your support.