> This would then expire a load of media suddenly from the database?

NO - the image files will be gone but the images will not have been expired. You should do a catalog consistency check

The All Log Entries or Problems Log reports show: "Bad image header," indicating a problem with the NetBackup images database.
http://support.veritas.com/docs/229602Message was edited by:
Bob Stump

Thanks Bob,

We don't seem to have any Bad Image Header errors on our system.

Also, when looking at the images folder for the particular client, for a particular date, we don't have any _123456789_FULL or _123456789_FULL.f files at all for the dates that we cannot restore from.

According to that link you provided, both the _FULL and _FULL.f files would need to exist for a restore to be possible? Since it appears we are missing these files can we restore them? Would this then 'resurrect' our Scratch tapes back to their correct Pool so that we could restore from them?

You mentioned a catalogue consistency check, is this a function within NetBackup or was that the link you specified?

Thanks for your help,

James.

What version of Netbackup are you running?

Thanks Bob,

We are running 5.1 MP5.

James.

Ok, I suggest a little bit of reading

The role of the Volume, Media, and Image databases
http://support.veritas.com/docs/273864

What is the result of the Volume and Media Database being altered or deleted?
http://support.veritas.com/docs/273631

But the most helpful will probably be this rather lengthy technote. Forget about the title, just read it. It will show you how to find out what is in the Netbackup catalog compared to what is actually on the tape. Here is it's link
http://support.veritas.com/docs/247898

Thanks for the info Bob,

I think it looks like we may need to perform a recovery of our Catalogue back to a snapshot before the \veritas\netbackup\db\images\* files were removed.

I'm assuming this would then rectify the database back to that point in time, however this would loose any information about backups performed since that time (3 weeks).

So I'm going to have a read up on bprecover - do I need to manually clear any folders before doing the recovery? ie. should \veritas\netbackup\db\images\* be empty?

After this I will attempt to consolodate any tapes which have been overwritten between that date and present (I will make a note of these before recovering the db).

Does this sound like a wise plan of action?

How many tapes do you have? Perhaps it would be better to run bpimport.

Hi Bob,

We have approx 80 tapes which are classed as Scratch, which must contain the data we need back in the database, which now is now missing a year's worth of backups for one particular client (ms exchange).

It may be the case that we could get away with importing only some of these tapes back into the database, however without knowing which tapes contain which clients etc we don't know which ones to import - these tapes are not listed in the media list report since the are now scratch - do you know of another way of determining what is on these tapes?

Also, if we restore the catalogue back 3 weeks, then we will loose information on the tapes used between then and now, which is 90 tapes.

Thanks for your help with this,
James.

1. make a catalog backup of your current catalog.
2.. tar up /usr/openv for additional safety.
2a. optionally move everything under /usr/openv and re-install netbackup
3. bprecover from your old catalog that you still have
4. ensure no backups start with this old catalog restored
4a. bprdreq -terminate
4b, de-activate all policies
5. restore away my friend
6. bprecover from the catalog backup from step 1 or untar step 2.Message was edited by:
Bob Stump

Thanks for the info Bob,

After much discussion in the office, we have decided to keep the current status, not restore the catalogue back 3 weeks, but to see if we can import the lost tapes back into the current database.

I have checked the "bpmedialist -L -h " report and the tapes in question do not exist, they do exist in the "vmquery -a" report with a pool of Scratch.

Now, do you know how we can list the contents of a tape directly? I've tried loading a tape and using "bpmedialist -mcontents -m " but since the tape is a member of the Scratch pool it says it is empty.

This also affects the Netbackup Management > Catalog > Import function as the Media ID does not appear in the list, presumably because it is in the Scratch pool.

Do we therefore have to completely delete the Media ID from the system and manually re-Add it, then we can list its contents and ultimately import it?

Thanks,
James.